Mexican Menu 240

Shrimp and Tomatillos - 84

2010-09-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

Last Spring I made a recipe for pork, tomatoes, and tomatillos and we really liked it. On a recent trip to Portland we went to the abundant Saturday Farmers Market that they have at the PSU campus, and bought all kinds of chiles, tomatillos, and cilantro for some of our Mexican cooking. I thought I'd be making the pork recipe again soon - after all, it's attached to the front of our refrigerator with a magnet!

The other day, this recipe for Shrimp and Tomatillos came up on my i-google screen where I receive a new recipe every day. I had just made a huge batch of green tomatillo salsa, but still had a few left, and decided to try this recipe rather than repeating the pork dish. We had just the right amount of everything after our trip to the Farmers Market except for the queso cotija which we had to run out and purchase. Cotija is a much drier cheese than queso fresco or panela, and some compare it to feta cheese. It goes very nicely on top of enchiladas, casseroles, and in soups.

The whole recipe only has a couple of ingredients: camarones, cebollas, ajo, chiles y tomatillos. It calls for a minimal amount of water to simmer these ingredients in, but you can also use clam juice. I had some vegetable broth on hand and used that. First you cook the onions and garlic for a few moments, and then you add the chiles (serranos, but jalapeños would work, too), and finally the liquid and the tomatillos. When these cook into a nice sauce - and not too mushy - you pour them over the raw shrimp, which have been cleaned, and are waiting for their sauce in a casserole dish. You then break up the queso cotija over the shrimp and tomatillos in the casserole dish and bake it for 20 minutes while the shrimp turn pink. Before serving, you can garnish it with a little chopped cilantro and a mighty squeeze of lime.

We enjoyed this new shrimp dish out on the back patio. Temperatures here in Oregon are getting cooler and we may not be able to eat outdoors much longer. We ate it with some warm corn tortillas and a bowl of guacamole. It was very good and we enjoyed eating something different - something that used some fresh ingredients from the Farmer's Market!

Comida mexicana at the campsite - 86 & 85

2010-08-28T15:28:00.001-07:00

Last week we went camping for 3 nights. I decided to challenge myself to cooking a Mexican meal over a campfire. Now, I don't mean to say that I was going to drag my whole kitchen along with me and whip up some semi-complicated meal. All I actually did was rummage through the refrigerator and freezer, gather up most of our leftovers and easy things to pull together, and pack them in a cooler.

We have a rule about cooking when we camp: meals have to be cooked in one skillet, in a foil pouch, or a combination of the two. We can pull things like raw vegetables, salads, fruit, etc, out of the cooler to accompany a meal, but we do not spend time with knives, cutting boards, and other kitchen tools "creating" meals at the campground.

Our first night there, we had brought along some Trader Joe's Bean and Cheese Taquitos. Before leaving home Javier had made some guacamole and stored it in the cooler with the other cold foods. Dinner was so simple - muy sencilla. All we had to do was heat the taquitos in a foil pouch over the campfire, and then serve them on paper plates with a side of guacamole. Yum!

Our second night we reheated some steaks that we'd cooked only to medium rare along with some frijoles pintos, chile verde de hongos (see the last post), papas, y un chile rojo - or as it's often called in Spain and Argentina - un morrón. This was a big one, so we were able to share it between the two of us. And, even though we'd brought some whole wheat tortillas along with us, we didn't need them as the dinner was filling enough without them, and we were already using our one skillet / one foil pouch limit.

On our last day of camping, we used the flour tortillas and finished up the beans, chile verde and a few potatoes in some breakfast burritos. It was all good!

Chile verde con hongos (champiñones) - 87

2010-08-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

We're having company over for dinner tonight who are vegetarians. There are a number of traditional Mexican dishes we could have fixed - cheese enchiladas, quesadillas, bean burritos, bean and cheese tostadas, etc etc etc - but we wanted to try something new with the Baby Portobello mushrooms we had in the refrigerator. I think Javier came up with a winner...

As I've written about before, he usually makes chile verde with pork. One time he tried it with chicken breast, and it just wasn't that great. So this time he's cautiously optimistic. He says he's going to treat the cut-up mushrooms as if they were cubed pork, and is going to make the recipe exactly as he makes the meat version.

I hope the cut-up mushrooms show up in the pictures, because they are definitely there. It tastes great, and we plan to serve it to our friends over brown rice and/or pinto beans. We also have some guacamole and warm corn and whole wheat tortillas to serve with the meal. They're bringing the dessert.

What's not to love about this meal ???

Eating Out in Bend - 88

2010-08-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

The next day - after the tuna salad day - was equally as hot, so Javier and I decided to go out for some Mexican food and tell about our experience.

I'm not sure what the legalities are when mentioning the names of places where we eat, so let's just say that we ate at one of the least pretentious but most popular Mexican food places here in town. They only serve lunch, and they only serve lunch Mondays through Fridays.

We decided to order some pretty routine items because 1) we have already created some of them for our blog, and 2) we wanted to see how routine is handled at a popular eatery. Our three items, which we shared were a chicken enchilada, a taco de carnitas, and a green chile burrito.

Our experience started out with me cutting off a bite of the chicken enchilada and burning the roof of my mouth on over-heated sauce and melted cheese. This has never happened to me before! So, I labeled the enchilada "off limits" for a few moments while I turned to the taco de carnitas, which is roasted pork served in a warm corn tortilla with pico de gallo salsa. For amount of meat served in the taco, it deserves a 10, but for flavor and the practicality of eating so much meat on a taco (the corn tortilla ripped open), it deserves a 7.

Javier started in on the burrito de chile verde and said that one side of the burrito was cool but the other half was warm. (Big difference from the enchilada I tried a few moments earlier). He said it was delicious, although not very picante, and deserved an 8.

When we were finally able to eat the enchilada, we discovered that it was all sauce and very little enchilada, especially in the chicken department. I would not order another one, and feel it deserved a 5.

Will we eat there again? Of course. We go once every year, and some meals are better than others. And, you can't be the prices which are excellent.

Ensalada de atún - 89

2010-08-21T16:56:00.001-07:00

A few days ago we had a tremendous hot spell here in Central Oregon, and there was NO WAY I was going to cook Mexican food.

We had recently purchased serrano peppers, tomatillos, tortillas de maíz, salsas, frijoles, aguacates, cebollas, cilantro, and several kinds of meat to get our cooking project going again, but cooking with any of these ingredients was not at the top of my list of "things to do" during record high temperatures.

As lunchtime came closer, I decided to take things out of the refrigerator - cold things - and combine them in a cold, Mexican-style tuna salad. The results were amazing!

I grew up in a household where "tuna salad" meant tuna mixed with Miracle Whip and sweet pickle relish - period. For my salad the only ingredient out of all of the above would be the tuna, and a white albacore tuna packed in water. After draining it and tossing it into a glass bowl, I diced tomatoes, onions, peppers, avocado, and cilantro on top. I squeezed a lime onto these ingredients, and had I mixed them at this point, I would have made a tuna ceviche. But I kept going and added 1 TB of mayonnaise and 2 TB of plain nonfat yogurt, and then some salt and pepper. Once it was mixed, I served it on lettuce leaves with some blue corn tortilla chips on the side. The picture might look like tuna and mayonnaise, but it was so much more!

Mexican Menu back at work!

2010-08-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've been gone for a while. Let me explain.

I teach at a community college here in Oregon. Every Spring as the academic school year comes to an end, I find myself buried in work. It is all I can do to drag myself into my classes each day and do a good job of teaching. There are meetings, tons of paperwork to complete, grades to record, and letters of recommendation to write.

This year I had the added responsibility of planning the college's first community trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had help with the planning, but was also going to accompany the first group of 11 students to the program we'd come up with that included Spanish classes and homestays. So, the end of this school year was a bit more chaotic than others. Mexican Menu 240 ground to a halt in late May while I put all of my efforts into tamping down the end of the school year and revving up the study abroad program.

Silly me...I thought that once I was in Argentina I'd be able to find Mexican-like ingredients and would be able to fix some interesting dishes for the natives. I thought I'd be able to write an interesting addition to my blog about cooking Mexican while in Argentina, a country that generally does not like spicy food. And, it's a country where tortillas are almost impossible to find.

Well, I made mole and rice for some friends of mine out in the suburbs (Adrogué) of Buenos Aires. It was a challenge with only one kind of dried peppers and highly sophisticated kitchen equipment that I didn't know how to use. (My friend, Teresita, is a professional cook) It was also the day of an important soccer match during the World Cup, so everyone had Maradona on their minds rather than Mexican food.

The mole turned out well, and I was able to serve it with a little guacamole beforehand. My very gracious hosts (and now friends), Teresita and Raul, raved about how much they love spicy food, and both ate generous portions.

The next and final attempt I made at cooking Mexican was fixing guacamole over and over for my friend, Alicia, in Buenos Aires. We have a routine: she buys a bag of Doritos and some wine for both of us, and I make the guacamole. We eat the whole bag (and it's really not that big in Argentina) of Doritos and the guacamole and call it our dinner. Argentines eat dinner very late in the evening (between 9-10:30) so the bowl of guacamole and the tortilla chips never seem like they're going to be enough for Alicia and me when we finally get around to eating it after several glasses of wine. It's been a fun routine of ours for the past two years.

There is nothing else that I could remotely stretch into something called Mexican that I ate while in Argentina. I ate the usual diet of meat, chicken, fish, pasta and pizza over and over. I had occasional salads, some grilled vegetables, and 2-4 Asian meals while I was there, but Mexican is not to be found, or at least not easily. Sad because I think they might like some of the varied dishes from Mexico if they had a chance to try them.

So, now we're home and I'm ready to resume the cooking, photographing, and writing about Mexican food. Summer presents some interesting challenges as many well-known and popular Mexican dishes are cooked. Others, like ceviche and certain salads, have already been featured. It looks like we'll be doing other salads, some grilled meats, and simple taco and/or tostada dishes until the temperatures drop here in Oregon.

I look forward to doing the final 90 recipes to complete the 240 that I originally proposed, although the whole plan has been altered. My original intent was to eat Mexican food 6 nights a week for a period of approximately 9 months and see if it was possible to live on foods that are generally spicy, feature tortillas, and are usually accompanied by rice, beans and / or bread (bolillos). By the way, last year I never did get sick of eating Mexican night after night, and rather enjoyed some of the doors that were opening as we tried new things, bought new cookbooks, and found new recipes from family and friends. So, here we go again!

The picture at the top is of me, Javier and Alicia in her living room.

Albóndigas con vegetales - 90

2010-05-22T07:07:00.000-07:00

Ninety seems like a nice round number. I thought about stopping here at this very good dish, but then realized that before leaving on my trip there are many more Mexican meals that we'll be sharing before my departure.

Albóndigas - meatballs - are a popular way to consume ground meat in Spain and other Latin American countries. One of my biggest surprises on my first trip to Mexico was a meal of Sopa de Albóndigas. I had always considered them to be something you ate with pasta smothered in a red sauce, or something my parents took to a potluck under the name of "Swedish Meatballs." Those were served in a chafing dish (before crock pots became more popular) and were usually smaller than the variety found sitting atop your spaghetti. They were smothered in some kind of pasty looking gravy, and most of them (or at least the ones I tried) were rather flavorless. Swedish meatballs were to the 1950s and 1960s what chicken wings became in the 1990s.

But I digress. All of the meatballs I've had in Spain and in Mexico have been very tasty, and are always served in some kind of rich soup full of vegetables, or in some kind of thick, flavorful sauce. One of the things about the meatballs in Mexico that I have always liked was the addition of rice rather than bread or breadcrumbs and, in some homes, a tiny bit of fresh mint. Since our mint is just starting to pop out all over in the garden, I decided to snip some from the garden and add it to our albóndigas last night.

While the meatballs were cooking, I made a sauce of tomatoes, peppers, diced jalapeños, onions, mushrooms, and garlic. Once the sauce was prepared and had simmered for a while, I added the cooked meatballs and allowed the two parts of this dish to cook together for several hours. The meatballs were made from a very lean ground beef, so there was no problem with grease settling onto the surface of the sauce.

I also prepared brown rice, guacamole, and fresh corn tortillas to go with dinner last night. Javier ate a lot of everything I'd prepared, and I only ate a few albóndigas con vegetales, tortillas y un poquito del guacamole.

Tacos de hongos - 91

2010-05-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

¿Dónde he estado? Where have I been? En una palabra - ocupadísima. In a word - very busy. It's the full time job, folks. The end of the term at the end of the school year in addition to several committee assignments have all kept me from doing my blog, and I apologize. Me disculpo...

Pero más importante, ¿qué he estado cocinando y comiendo? But more importantly, what have I been cooking and eating? I have not given up on this challenge, and continue to eat Mexican food almost daily. The reason that I haven't blogged about any of the recent meals hasn't been just the job, but the repetition of all of our favorite meals. So, while I've been missing, we've eaten things like chile rellenos, tacos de pollo, bistec con salsa ranchera, fajitas, y huevos. It's all been good, but hurried. Again, me disculpo...

So, the other night we've got these beautiful baby portobello mushrooms, and I want to make something Mexican. I nixed the idea of making quesadillas con hongos because I didn't want to buy or eat flour tortillas and cheese. We'd already had meat several times during the week, and half of the mushrooms had been added to a lovely vegetarian spaghetti sauce the previous week. I decided I'd make a taco filling using the baby portobellos with tomatoes, onions, peppers, olive oil and lots of seasoning - mucha sazón - and fresh corn tortillas with a good, crumbly Mexican cheese.

Dinner was light, but dinner was unique and delicious! Es posible que repitamos esta comida muy pronto.

Camarones y Aguacate - 92

2010-05-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

Excuse the picture. We made this quickly the other evening and then photographed it very quickly, too, as we were hungry and ready to eat!

This is an excellent recipe that was given to me by a friend in Houston. I'm not sure where she got it from, but Javier and I make it several times a year since we love the two main ingredients - shrimp (camarones) and avocado (aguacate)

First you cook the shrimp and then you marinate it for an hour. The salad is started by chopping avocado, chives, cilantro, and a chile serrano if you like. The marinade is drained off the shrimp before adding it to the salad ingredients, and before adding the dressing, you squeeze a lime over everything. he whole mixture is tossed in a dressing of mayonnaise, hot sauce and a few drops of Tabasco. To keep the calories down, we used very little mayonnaise and some plain nonfat yogurt.

Enfrijoladas - 93

2010-05-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

¿Qué es esto? ¿Enfrijoladas?

Look back on the blog to enchiladas, and you'll find that they are corn tortillas with a filling - pollo, queso, vegetales - and the sauce consists of something with chile.

Look back on the blog to entomatadas, and you'll find that they are corn tortillas with a filling (same as above) - and the base of the sauce is mainly tomato.

Look at the picture of the ENFRIJOLADAS and you'll see that the sauce is made from - frijoles! I had these for the first time in Morelia while staying in the home of Señora Betty (her real name was Elsa), and she enjoyed cooking all kind of vegetarian meals in between an occasional dish that featured meat. When she fixed ENFRIJOLADAS for us, I had never heard of them before, so she explained that they were similar to an enchilada but had a sauce made from frijoles. The sauce is, of course, thinner than frijoles that you'd eat on a plate, and can be thinned down with chicken stock or cream. The ones she made for us in Morelia were so simple with a cheese filling, and she served them with a mixed vegetable (maiz, calabaza y cebolla) on the side.

We had some leftover chicken from the grill the other day, so we shredded it for the inside of our ENFRIJOLADAS. Javier had never had these before, and had been acting like he just wasn't sure what I was doing or why I was doing it. I kept telling him - calmado - let me do my work! It paid off because he ended up eating 5 of them. ¡Salieron deliciosas!

Huevos con Carne y Migas - 94

2010-05-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

OK, so we've already featured HUEVOS CON MIGAS on this blog, but this time we took some of the CARNE DE RES ADOBADA left over from a few nights before, sliced it thin, and then sauteed it with the migas before scrambling the eggs into the whole mixture. The result? Excellent breakfast tacos!

After warming a stack of fresh corn tortillas from our favorite tortillería, we served this platter of the eggs, meat and migas in the center of the table along with a nice salsa ranchera and some queso fresco. Javier and I have given up on large breakfasts, except on Sundays, and today was the day for our experiment with leftovers.

Breakfast was served with jugo de naranja y café - and it was perfecto!

Bacalao con Morrones - 95

2010-05-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

What in the world is BACALAO CON MORRONES? The translation is Codfish with Red Peppers, and as you can see from the pictures, those peppers are really red.

While this might look complicated, it was actually a fairly easy recipe. First I gently sauteed some onions and garlic in olive oil, and then added the cod to the pan to brown it, too. Once the fish was cooked through and flaky, I added some pickled red peppers that I'd bought at Whole Foods. They come whole in a small jar, so I cut them into strips before adding them to the fish. Before serving the fish, I added a small amount of white wine to the pan to "unstick" the fish, onions and garlic.

We ate the BACALAO CON MORRONES with a small avocado salad on the side. It was really good, except that the peppers weren't very spicy. Next time I might go another route with dark red chile ancho strips, or something like that.

Carne de Res Adobada - 96

2010-05-02T17:16:00.000-07:00

Javier fixes the most flavorful flank steaks in a marinade that he learned to make in a Mexican restaurant years ago. Because they're so good, we tend to eat flank steaks this way and don't experiment with other recipes very often. So, the other day we decided to step out of our comfort zone and try something new and a little bit different.

The recipe for the CARNE DE RES ADOBADA came out of one of my cookbooks that I've had forever. I don't use it very often because it's big and heavy, and I'm always worried about spilling something hideous onto the beautiful pages. However, whenever I do venture into this cookbook and fix something for the family or for my classes at school, the recipes always turn out very well.

This particular recipe utilizes a combination of techniques and ingredients. First the flank steak gets a rub-down with a combination of Dijon mustard, salt and freshly ground black pepper. While it sits in its rub, you can make the marinade out of a combination of ingredients - chile guajillo, garlic, onion, tomato, black peppercorns, marjoram and oregano. Once the marinade is done (and it has to simmer for a while before using it as a marinade on the steak) you can pour it over the meat and let it sit for the next half hour while you prepare the grill. (We always grill some dark green chile poblanos while we wait for the grill to get hot enough for the meat).

As you can see from the picture, we grilled the meat and served the chiles poblanos on the side. Our dinner consisted of the grilled CARNE DE RES ADOBADA and a FIESTA SALAD, a recipe of my own. Basically it's made from salad greens, tomatoes, colorful bell peppers, and queso cotija. We served it with a low-cal cilantro salad dressing that we bought from Trader Joe's. The salad was great, as was the CARNE!

Ensalada de Cangrejo - 97

2010-04-30T16:58:00.000-07:00

Spring time and summer always mean that we stop eating so many soups and start eating more salads. We love both soups and salads, so don't mind the trade-off each year as the seasons change. This year Spring has been chaotic. It was announced on the calendar, but out in the real world its arrival has been reluctant. For example, today it is bright and sunny, but the temperatures are just barely in the 50s. Most of last week was dark, raining and cold. One day at the college, my students and I looked out the window, and it was blowing snow. That stopped after about 15 minutes.

Sometimes what seems to be a good idea for dinner in the morning, turns out to be all wrong in the evening. We have defrosted chicken to make a nice hot soup in the evening only to have the temperatures get near 70 later in the day. That chicken usually ends up on the grill. Or, we have bought crabmeat (like this week) and then watched as the temperatures stayed all day in the upper 30s or low 40s. It's been frustrating.

Since we had the crabmeat out, and had bought all of the other ingredients for this Mexican crabmeat salad - ENSALADA DE CANGREJO - we just went ahead and made it. The main ingredients were the crab, diced tomatoes, onions, celery (apio), chiles serranos, chives, lime juice, and a light mayonnaise / yogurt dressing. Muy sencilla y muy deliciosa.

Normally we will eat this kind of salad on a tostada, but since we were watching calories, we just ate it on salad plates accompanied by a glass of cold white wine. For dessert we had some fresh pineapple. This makes a perfect meal for a warm day, so our calculations were off a little, but we still enjoyed it a lot.

Pollo Almendrado - 98

2010-04-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

I've had all of the ingredients on hand for this dish for over a month, but just couldn't talk myself into making it. I kept finding other things to do with chicken.

Javier happened to come across the recipe, and after checking to see that we still had all of the ingredients, he decided to make POLLO ALMENDRADO one evening. I still couldn't muster much enthusiasm, but thanked him and then left for work.

When I got home that evening, the garage (which is next to our kitchen) smelled divine as I got out of the car. When I stepped into the kitchen, the aroma was amazing. I couldn't wait to try this POLLO ALMENDRADO recipe that I'd been avoiding for almost a month.

It was really good and really different. It wasn't very spicy, but that was okay because we eat so much spicy food. The sauce was smooth and delicious, and the almonds weren't overwhelming. This is a dish that I would like to make again someday!

Burrito Rojo - 99

2010-04-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

...and this one comes straight out of New Mexico from a diner alongside the highway!

We were driving back to Colorado from Texas one year and decided to stop for lunch at a diner sitting out in the middle of nowhere. The waitress talked us into a couple of burritos (the children had already ordered hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches), and then asked us if we wanted red or green chile "smothering" our burritos.

We ordered one of each.

Javier got the green one, which he liked, and I got the red one, which I adored. It was a delicious, thick red sauce full of ground beef and served over a bean burrito. The whole mess was then covered in lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, and grated cheese. I had decided to pass on the sour cream as it might have too many calories - ha!

Javier quickly lost interest in his green burrito and had to have a taste of mine. He finally talked me out of the whole red burrito and I ended up with the green one. It was also good, but not quite as exciting as the red one had been.

We still make both on different occasions, and neither one is better. They're both excellent!

Tacos alemanes / German Tacos - 100

2010-04-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is the most improbable and multicultural of meals - German tacos. We learned to make these when we lived in Texas the first time (1992-1994) in San Antonio. We attended a nearby chile cook-off, but arrived late and only found a few of the competitors still serving their chile. After sampling a few of the different varieties, which were all good, we discovered that we were still hungry, and headed straight for a taco cart which was doing a brisk business near the chile stands.

The young man making the GERMAN TACOS explained to us that South Texas has a long history of German and Mexican peaceful coexistence. He had taken "the best of both worlds" and combined them into one meal: the taco alemán, or German taco.

The taco part of the meal comes from the tortilla and the hot peppers. The German part comes from the sausage, sauerkraut and mustard. (We sometimes add salsa to make it all even out in terms of the number of Mexican and German ingredients) Any good grilled sausage will do, and this time around we made it with a chicken and jalapeño sausage we'd bought at Trader Joes. We grilled them as we cooked up some canned sauerkraut indoors, and heated some whole wheat /whole grain tortillas on the comal. Once they were ready to assemble, we added some hot German mustard and canned, pickled serrano peppers. Once the picture was taken, we rolled up our tacos, as usual, and devoured them.

Unusual? Yes - but very good, and something different. They're Tex Mex and maybe not very well known outside of Texas, but definitely worth trying sometime!

Chile Relleno de Queso - 101

2010-04-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

We've already done CHILE RELLENOS DE PICADILLO, CHILE RELLENOS DE MARISCOS and CHILE EN NOGADA...so what was left to do?

¡Un buen CHILE RELLENO DE QUESO!

Whenever Javier lights up the grill for a barbecue, we always put on some chile poblanos for other meals. We use the green chile strips in egg dishes, in quiche-type dishes, casseroles, and our favorite - any kind of CHILE RELLENO. Since we had already done several varieties using meat, seafood, and a vegetable filling, it was now time for the more traditional variety with a simple cheese filling.

As I've mentioned before, we have given up the old routine of coating the stuffed chiles in an egg batter and then frying them in oil. We now use an egg white batter and "oven fry" them before putting a rich, tomato-based with chile and onion sauce over them. They are really delicious!

This evening's chiles were stuffed with queso fresco before being coated with the egg white batter and baked in a 400 degree oven for about 25-20 minutes. We then served them separately onto a plate, covered them with a tomato, chile and onion salsa, and served some roasted corn (from Trader Joe's) on the side. They were SO GOOD and I cannot wait to repeat this meal someday soon!

Sopa de Lentejas con Albóndigas - 102

2010-04-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

Weren't we just making salads a couple of weeks (days?) ago? Here we thought it was Spring, but the cold weather came back in Central Oregon complete with snow, frost and ice this morning.

¡Qué lástima! Time for soups again...

We had some lentils leftover from the last time we made a vegetable-based lentil soup, so this time we decided to make soup with meat. We made some little tiny meatballs - albondigas - with some fresh, natural ground beef from Whole Foods. We didn't have any rice, oatmeal or breadcrumbs to add to them (which is unusual around this house) so we seasoned them instead with diced onions, powdered chipotle, salt, pepper and a little pinch of oregano.

The soup was made this time with a chicken stock base, the lentils (lentejas), carrots, potatoes, onions and celery. I also added a small amount (about 1 T) of diced jalapeño and 1/4 cup of diced tomatoes. We simmered the lentils first in water, and as it cooked away, we added the chicken stock and all of the other ingredients - vegetales, albóndigas, y sazón. It turned out to be a great cold weather soup which we ate for dinner tonight with warm corn tortillas and guacamole.

Now - cold weather, go away!

Mole rojo - 103 - and an update on progress

2010-04-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

When I started this project back in October 2009, my original intention was to see if we could eat Mexican food (almost) once a day for the eight months prior to my summer trip to Argentina. I calculated that there were roughly 30 days in a month x 8 months before travel, which equaled 240 meals we'd try and prepare and eat before leaving.

Now I look at the countdown and see that there are 102 more meals I need to eat and write about before my departure date of June 15. In pocas palabras, as they say in Spanish, I have less than 60 days to eat and write about Mexican food 102 more times - IF I stick to my original plan.

That's not to say that I can't eat Mexican food twice a day, which I do most days when you figure in the leftovers and an occasional Mexican breakfast of huevos con migas or quesadillas. Most days at lunch time I sit at my desk and eat Mexican sobras - leftovers from the night before.

And there's the problem: no, I'm not gaining weight from eating so much Mexican food. In fact, just recently I've lost 6 pounds. Es el trabajo. It's my job. Without going into too many details, over the past 7-8 months I've seen my workload increase tremendously. I used to come home and enjoy cooking as an escape or something to look forward to outside of the college, but for the past several months I've been coming home exhausted. On the days when I can find the time and the strength to fix a meal with Javier, I find myself too tired later (or I'm grading papers) and can't find the energy to do the blogging - which, by the way, I love to do.

So, I'm behind in my goal, but will seguir adelante (continue forward) in the hopes that I get near to my goal. If I don't make it by June 15, then I will try and locate Mexican food while I'm in Argentina; I will see what I can find down there to fix for others while I'm staying in a home; or I'll just finish this up once I return. Please continue to read as we continue to cook, eat and enjoy Mexican food every day.

For today, enjoy the picture of the MOLE ROJO. I made this last Sunday for a classroom presentation I was doing for one of the the Literature courses on campus which had just finished reading Como agua para chocolate. I really did enjoy making it, this time with more of the chiles guajillos for a deeper red color. We all had fun eating it last night at the classroom presentation I did on the history of Mexico and its most famous dish, MOLE.

Ceviche y Alcachofa - 104

2010-04-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

Lately our weather has been improving, and it finally looks and feels like Spring. So, last night we decided to celebrate with a decidedly Springtime meal which featured cold dishes for our dinner.

The main dish was another version of CEVICHE. The last time we made it, the main ingredient was baby shrimp. This time the recipe we used called from shrimp and bay scallops. The other ingredients in this version of CEVICHE were the usual diced onion, tomato, chile serrano, cilantro, and lime juice. The only seasoning we added was salt.

We like our CEVICHE served on a crisp tostada shell, so we made our own in the oven in order to avoid all of the salt and calories that come with the store-bought variety that are usually fried. They're often made from old corn tortillas, too, and can taste stale if not totally rancid. We took some of our own fresh corn tortillas, sprayed them very lightly with some olive oil, and then baked them until they were crispy enough to hold the CEVICHE on top.

We also cooked a gigantic artichoke - alcachofa en espanol - to eat as a side dish with our tostadas de ceviche. Growing up I was always served artichokes with a little dish of Miracle Whip on the side, which I never liked. I enjoyed going to friends' homes where melted butter or real mayonnaise was served with artichokes. Last night I whipped up my own concoction, a dip made from low-cal mayonnaise with some low cal ranch dressing and chipotle chile powder added for flavor. It was very good, and we are contemplating a repeat of this side dish later this week.

Smothered Burrito - 105

2010-04-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've been writing about CHILE VERDE all week because Javier made such a big batch.

Today we decided to finish it off, and to do so, we made some bean and rice burritos, and then smothered them with the CHILE VERDE, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese.

Not only were they very, very good, but they were also very filling. We started with a nice, big warm flour (whole wheat) tortilla, and filled it with some leftover rice and beans before folding it neatly with all of the ends tucked it. We then placed the BURRITO into the middle of a plate, ladled some hot CHILE VERDE over it, and then garnished the whole thing with the shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and grated cheese. The cheese we used today happened to be a grated Monterrey Jack leftover from the SOPES we made a day earlier.

We've featured a couple of meals lately that owe their existence to leftovers in the refrigerator. I would love to hear some comments about other ways to "spin" leftovers into delicious, Mexican meals!

Sopes - 106

2010-04-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

I kept wondering when we'd get to feature SOPES on this blog.

I came home from work one evening, and Javier had been experimenting all day with a combination of recipes he'd found on the Internet to make homemade SOPES for our dinner that evening. He'd done his homework and had taken it upon himself to surprise me with something different that night, something I wasn't expecting.

SOPES are made from the same dough that you can use for making corn tortillas. You can either buy the masa pre-made in a Mexican market, or you can mix your own from a combination of dry masa harina, water and salt. Javier used the latter method.

SOPES start out as thick corn tortillas that you heat on the comal. When they begin to look golden colored, and before they become stiff, you pinch up an edge on them (sort of like a crown) and then return them to the comal to finish the toasting process. At this point, some people remove them and deep fry them in oil - and believe me, they are delicious this way. Javier wanted to keep our dinner healthy and low-cal, so he continued to toast them on the comal and then kept them warm in the oven until I got home from work.

SOPES are assembled in the same way that you assemble a bean tostada: beans, salsa, guacamole, shredded lettuce, tomatoes and/or salsa, and cheese. They are delicious with a nice queso fresco crumbled on top, but this particular evening we only had some grated Monterrey Jack cheese on hand. You can see from the pictures that they look delicious. They were!

Mexican Chef Salad -107

2010-04-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

This may seem like a repeat, but it's not. We had some leftover roast chicken, and since we'd both been feeling like we'd been eating a lot of heavy meals lately, we decided to use it in a lighter salad main dish.

We went through the refrigerator and found lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, mushrooms (hongos o champiñones en español) green onions and a bottle of French dressing. We went into the cupboard and discovered a can of kidney beans and a jar of pickled jalapeños. Finally, we decided to toast some tortilla strips, toss everything together with the leftover roast chicken, and call it a Mexican Chef Salad.

The picture you'll see doesn't do it justice because you can't see all of the ingredients tossed together, but it was muy buena. We'd been eating spicy CHILE VERDE for several meals before the salad, so the addition of the pickled jalapeños was just enough spice added to a meal that we enjoyed because of its simplicity, its vegetable content, and the opportunity to clean out the refrigerator and the cabinets a little!

Verde Chile Verde - 108

2010-04-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

Javier loves to make CHILE VERDE, and when he does, he usually uses the same ingredients - tomates, chiles, cebollas, cilantro, carne de puerco, caldito de pollo y pocas especias. The result is almost always delicioso and we have taught ourselves to eat CHILE VERDE in many different ways. We smother burritos, eat it in bowls, ladle it over white corn posole, and eat it to the side of arroz. We also serve it over eggs, and then freeze whatever we have left.
I used to know someonewho worked at the Mexican restaurant we worked at that used to eat an enormous quesadilla made with a flour tortilla and tons of cheese topped with CHILE VERDE. He used to ask Javier's kitchen to serve him a little dish on the side, and then he would pour a thin veil of CHILE VERDE over his big quesadilla before eating it all with a knife and fork. I tried it one time, and it was delicious.
Javier wanted to make another round of CHILE VERDE this week with part of a pork tenderloin that we had not used from a previous meal, and so I asked him to do something different. I asked him to make it very very verde.
This time he made his usual recipe, but instead of tomates, he made it with tomatillos. He had also cooked up some frijoles pintos, but not knowing how I wanted to eat the VERDE CHILE VERDE, he also cooked up some posole de maíz blanco and let me choose. I went for the Javier couldn't make up his mind, so he ladled his portion over posole y frijoles. Then he topped it with some grated queso fresco before eating it all.

King Ranch Casserole - 109

2010-04-13T17:51:00.000-07:00

Not exactly Mexican from Mexico, this classic casserole is very popular in Texas and appears at many potlucks and family reunions. When we lived in San Antonio and later in Houston, you could always count on at least one - and often several - King Ranch casseroles at school and church potluck suppers.

The main ingredients in any King Ranch casserole are cooked chicken, tortillas, some kind of cream-of-something soup (or cream sauce), tomatoes, onions, chiles and cheese. There are any number of deviations and additions, such as corn, sliced olives, different kinds of cheese, and tortilla chips (or Fritos) instead of corn tortillas. As long as the resulting casserole is both creamy, cheesy, slightly spicy, and piping hot, it's all good.

I have several recipes for King Ranch casserole as well as many others for a variety of Mexican casseroles that call for ingredients that one can typically find in popular dishes such as tacos, tostadas, enchiladas and tamales. I even have a recipe somewhere for a quesadilla casserole. They are all calorie-laden, including the ones that claim to be "light." They're usually easy to fix, however, and if you have an aversion to canned creamed soups, you can make your own white sauce and season it however you wish.

Ensalada Mexicana - 110

2010-04-13T17:34:00.001-07:00

When I was in Mexico for extended periods years ago, I could count on one hand the number of times I ate salad. In fact, whenever I'd return to the US, one of the first things I'd do was either make a salad, or order one in a restaurant - even in an airport on a stopover on my way home! One of the reasons for not eating salads had to do with an old taboo on eating any kind of vegetables that hadn't been baked, boiled, or stripped of a thick, outside peel. Raw root vegetables such as radishes and carrots were to be avoided altogether. Lettuce and tomatoes were, of course, off-limits because they're not cooked for salads, which usually left cucumbers one of the few raw salad vegetables that could be eaten because of the removal of its thick peel.

Another reason for not eating salads was the fact that they weren't on many menus, and none of the homes I stayed in ever offered them as part of a meal. The usual offerings of salads on restaurant menus included potato salads, marinated vegetable salads, and a small number of pasta salads. One home I stayed in made a very simple potato salad made with boiled potatoes, mayonnaise, a drained can of peas and carrots, and some salt - period. Green salads just weren't popular when I was in Mexico, and even if they became popular over the years, I was never offered many.

I remember being taken to a wonderful Italian restaurant in Guadalajara that had an enormous salad bar and wondering if I should go ahead and eat the salad. I did, and there were no problems following that dinner.

So, when I located a recipe for a Mexican salad made with Romaine lettuce, cooked beets, diced avocado and queso fresco I thought - why not? - and made it for our dinner one night. The recipe called for fresh beets to be roasted in a foil packet with a little balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Ours burned a little, but it gave them a special flavor. I made the salad and tossed it with a homemade balsamic vinegar dressing, and it was amazing. I just happened to have company that evening, and I think everyone enjoyed this salad as much as I did.

Pork Tenderloin in an Orange Chipotle Sauce - 111

2010-04-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

This is a totally new and different recipe culled from the pages of a very old Bon Appetit magazine that featured mostly Mexican recipes years ago. We had a pork tenderloin sitting in the freezer, so decided to give it a try.

I'm glad we did because it was delicious and completely different than other meals with meat we've been cooking. It went like this: Javier grilled the tenderloin (lomo) on the grill and I cooked the sauce, which was a combination of shallots, chicken broth, orange juice, canned chipotle chiles, chives and cilantro. The sauce took a little work in terms of dicing the ingredients and then keeping an eye on it so it didn't reduce to nothing, but it was worth it. Once the pork was grilled to medium well, we sliced it onto a large plate (pictured) and gently poured the ORANGE CHIPOTLE SAUCE over it.

On the side, we had some grilled sweet potato slices and sauteed mushrooms. For dessert we had the BUDÍN DE MANGO that I wrote about (and made) the day before. This recipe is one we will repeat, although probably in some more elegant context, such as a holiday meal or for company.

Budín de Mango - 112

2010-04-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Not really a meal, but a unique dessert... I learned to make BUDÍN DE MANGO several years ago in Morelia, México when I was there with a group of students. We were offered cooking lessons, but they were set up differently than other cooking classes I'd been to. First the students' instructor would walk them to the market where each student would purchase some item that was to be used in the cooking class that day. This encouraged their use of the language. Then the students were walked to a private home where either the lady of the house - la ama de casa - or her trusted housekeeper would then give the students a cooking lesson using the ingredients that had been purchased earlier in the mercado.

The day I accompanied the students, we arrived at the home of Señora Raquel, who first sat us down for some entertaining chatter, and then turned us over to her housekeeper to give us a cooking lesson on SOPA TARASCA and BUDÍN DE MANGO. I've already featured SOPA TARASCA in an earlier post, so thought it was high time for the dessert recipe.

Basically, BUDÍN DE MANGO is very simple. You cut several ripe mangoes into chunks and put them in the blender. You add crema fresca (not sour cream), some vanilla, and a little bit of sugar. You puree the ingredients until they're smooth, and then pour the mixture into individual dessert cups and refrigerate until the BUDÍN is set. Crema fresca is quite fattening, so I made ours this evening with some fresh, nonfat yogurt. I licked the spoon after making it for our dessert this evening, and it tasted just fine.

(Otra) Sopa de Pescado - 113

2010-04-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a recipe for a fish and shrimp soup that looked a lot like our recipe for Caldo Michi. The main differences were the addition of potatoes and celery, the shrimp, white wine, and the method of cooking.

On the scanned recipe that my friend, Susan, sent me was the notation that out of a possible 10 points, someone had given this recipe a 12.5. I knew I had to try it. If you haven't noticed by now, soups are one of my favorite meals!

This turned out to be not just a soup but a very filling and elegant meal. The soup - which was full of potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, jalapeño peppers and tomatoes - was very rich and delicious. The shrimp and fish went into the simmering soup towards the end of the cooking process, and helped the flavor and texture reach a crescendo. We served it as we usually serve Mexican soups with diced avocados and limes on the side.

This one's a keeper. We will definitely serve it again as we would any traditional Mexican main-dish soup. Thank you, Susan, for sending this recipe to me!

Tacos al pastor / borrego - 114

2010-04-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

We had some delicious leftover leg of lamb to use up from a meal we had while my mother was visiting. One of her favorite things to eat is lamb, so while she was here, Javier grilled a boneless leg of lamb from Costco, and now we had the leftovers to contend with.

The whole idea of a taco is to put anything you like into a warm corn (or flour) tortilla and eat it that way. It's the same principle of putting anything between two slices of bread and calling it a sandwich. I've seen just about everything but desserts put into tortillas and eaten at mealtimes, so the idea of warming up leftovers and recycling them into another meal is not that weird.

So we had this leftover boneless leg of lamb and decided to dice it, warm it up and serve it in tacos in a "style" that's called AL PASTOR. When meat is served AL PASTOR - or shepherd style - it means it will be served with diced onion, cilantro and maybe a little salsa that you have on hand. The key ingredient is the fresh, warm tortilla.

This simple meal turned out well. I had 3 TACOS AL PASTOR, and later in the evening helped Javier finish up a small portion of FLAN that was also left over from my mother's visit. It was not what you'd call a remarkable meal, but very filling and delicious.

Calabacitas rancheras - 115

2010-04-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

The other day I got a real good deal on some zucchini squash, so I bought a little over a pound and brought it home to see what I could do with it that would fit into our Mexican Menu.

I had marked a zucchini recipe in my old Diana Kennedy cookbook and decided that now was the time to try it. I had all of the ingredients on hand - zucchini, white onions, garlic, and charred and peeled chili poblanos. I also had defrosted some boneless, skinless chicken thighs (muslos) and decided that we would grill them on the side.

CALABACITAS RANCHERAS is very similar to a dish that we used to eat all the time when I lived in Guadalajara, but the one we ate then also had fresh corn off the cob (elote) thrown into the mixture for good measure. This recipe was so incredibly simple, the hardest part being the chopping of so many zucchinis, an onion and three cloves of garlic. The charred and peeled chiles had been done weeks ago and frozen, so that made things easy.

As you can see, I served the CALABACITAS with a little queso fresco sprinkled on top, with the grilled muslos, and with some fresh and warmed corn tortillas. It was an excellent, easy meal - low on calories and high on flavor! The picture on the right shows the calabacitas as they were cooking, and the smaller picture to the left shows the dish we served at the table with the queso fresco crumbled on top.

Sopa de almejas - 116

2010-04-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

Weeks ago while planning meatless Friday meals, I bought a couple of cans of clams and some beautiful organic wheat pasta to make linguine with clam sauce. Initially the only thing troubling me about this meal was whether I was going to make white clam sauce or red clam sauce.

As someone who tries to eat very little flour in my meals, the idea of a big plate of pasta began troubling me. And, as someone who writes a blog on trying to cook and eat Mexican food each day, the idea became even more disturbing.

I got out one of my older cookbooks to look up clams - almejas in Spanish - and most of the recipes featured clams in their shells - steamed, in paella-like dishes, or in seafood soups or stews. Just as I was beginning to give up on the idea of using my canned clams for a Mexican meal, I came across this recipe, SOPA DE ALMEJAS from Baja California, México.

My initial excitement over this dish was due to the fact that the clams would be cooked in a broth with vegetables and not in a thick, creamy chowder like the American version. My second surprise came when I realized that I had all of the ingredients on hand and wouldn't have to run out to buy anything else. I also noticed that this recipe didn't include any kind of chiles in the cooking process which made it the ideal choice for our dinner last night while Mom is still here.

Preparation was easy as the ingredients are simple: olive oil, garlic, onions, celery, potatoes, chicken broth, canned clams and their juice, and either chopped parsley or cilantro. From start to finish it only took 30 minutes. The final surprise came when we ate it served with limes and sliced jalapeños. Now, this was no CALDO MICHI with lots of different flavors, textures and spices, but it was a very good soup on a cold Friday night, the last meatless Friday in Lent.

When I make it again, I will add carrots for color.

Chipotle Chile Brownies - 117

2010-04-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

Not really a meal, but something different for dessert.

The other day I bought some powdered chile chipotle and it came with this recipe. I decided to try it as it looked so unique.

The brownies were definitely spicy, but they needed more chocolate and less ginger. I was able to taste the ginger more than the chile chipotle although it's definitely there.

The next time I make these - and I will - I will cut back on the ginger, add more chocolate (and maybe some chocolate chips) and finish them off with a dusting of powdered sugar. It's a really good idea, but for my tastes, it needs work.

Tostadas vegetarianas - 118

2010-04-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

It was time to clean out the refrigerator. Javier had cooked too many frijoles pintos a few days before when he made the excellent FAJITAS, and there was a variety of salsas, cheeses, and an almost overripe avocado that all needed using up. We decided to turn leftover night into VEGETARIAN TOSTADA night at our dinner table.

I know I've said this before, but TOSTADAS are one of my favorite Mexican meals. Just the other day Javier and I decided to lump people into categories, by their love of either an enchilada, a taco, a burrito or a tostada as their favorite meal. Javier definitely loves wrapping things up in flour tortillas and calling it a burrito; our daughter, Erica, loves enchiladas, especially cheese ones; and I am a tostada lover. I also have a friend in Colorado that awaits our visits every year so that we can make a meal of chicken tostadas at her dinner table. Where my other kids stand on their favorite Mexican food is a mystery. I'm going to poll them.

But back to the VEGETARIAN TOSTADAS...Javier mashed the remaining frijoles pintos, made a fresh guacamole (and the avocado turned out to be just fine and not overripe), and we used up two jars of commercial salsa in addition to some queso fresco that we had crumbled earlier in the week. We also diced some tomatoes, chopped some lettuce, and baked rather than fried our remaining corn tortillas. Dinner was delicious and today our refrigerator looks more organized!

Javier's Beef Fajitas - 118

2010-03-31T17:42:00.001-07:00

This is one of our very best recipes, although I should not include myself in the creativity or preparation category. Javier gets all of the credit for this one!

It's simple: he marinates one big skirt steak in a special recipe of his own that is part soy sauce, water, olive oil, garlic and pepper, then grills it slightly, thinly slices the meat, and finally stir fries the meat quickly with peppers, onions and mushrooms. Javier's FAJITAS are the best!

At the table we serve the FAJITAS with guacamole (por supuesto), salsa, queso, tortillas and a side of FRIJOLES CHARROS, which we featured in an earlier blog. I usually eat two tacos made from a corn tortilla, FAJITAS, peppers, onions, guacamole and salsa. I eat the beans on the side and am stuffed when I finish.

Last night's FAJITAS were no exception. They were fantásticas!

Sobras - Enchiladas y ensalada con Quinoa - 119

2010-03-29T18:36:00.001-07:00

We had so much pollo left over from dinner the other evening that we were faced with three choices: enchiladas de pollo, tostadas de pollo, o burritos de pollo? We let my Mom choose since she will only be here for another 6 days, and she went for the enchiladas. Making the sauce was no big chore since we had some of the peanut sauce left over from dinner the other evening. We did a few things to it, like adding some tomato sauce and some more chipotle chile powder, but that was about it.

Last night we attended a potluck and took along a quinoa salad. For those of you not familiar with quinoa, it is a grain from the South American highlands that is now available in almost any supermarket. It is easy to cook, and because it doesn't have a whole lot of it's own flavor, it lends itself easily to being mixed with other ingredients. Last night I made a friend of mine's recipe for Quinoa Salad and added diced cucumber, red onion, chopped fresh mint leaves, parsley, and some dried cranberries. I then tossed it all in a light combination of lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Quinoa is NOT a typically Mexican dish, but it was yummy and went well with the enchiladas and some guacamole that Javier made at the last moment.

Dinner was a spontaneous, unplanned meal, which, as we all know, sometimes are the best!

Pechugas de pollo en salsa de Cacahuate - 120

2010-03-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

OK, so it seems like we're eating a lot of chicken lately, but we're not. In between the grilled chicken (POLLO A LA PARRILLA) several days ago and this latest dish using chicken breasts (PECHUGAS) we had been eating other things that Mom liked and that weren't Mexican.

I decided to spring this one on her and see how she liked it. It's an old recipe out of one of my old Diana Kennedy cookbooks, and it is GOOD. The main ingredients besides the PECHUGAS are peanuts (cacahuates), tomatoes, garlic, onion, and chipotle peppers. For Mom's protection, I only added one rather than 2-3 chipotles that are called for in the recipe.

We served the finished PECHUGAS DE POLLO EN SALSA DE CACAHUATE with some brown rice on the side and some hot corn tortillas. Before dinner we had some guacamole with tortilla chips. All three of us - even Mom - liked the PECHUGAS and agreed that the amount of chile chipotle was just right. I think it could have used more peanuts and a bit more garlic, too. I would make this dinner again in a flash - for company, for a potluck or just for the two of us!

Pollo a la Parrilla - 121

2010-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a Mexican dish that is Mom-friendly, the kind that isn't too spicy, greasy, or exotic looking for the over 85 crowd.

Javier fixes a wonderful fajita marinade from a recipe he's used for years. I think he learned it back in the 1980's when he still worked in a Mexican restaurant, and it has served us well. It's very simple, and as always, I am happy to provide it to readers if you'd like me to. Just write in the comment section and ask!

So, Mom wanted chicken, but not chicken breast, which is what (she claims) they serve every day in the retirement home. She wanted chicken she could taste. We bought some boneless, skinless thighs, marinaded them in the fajita marinade most of the day, and then grilled them that evening with some sliced sweet potato (camote in Mexico, batata in most parts of South America), zucchini (calabaza) and eggplant (berenjena). The day had been warm, perfect for cooking dinner on the parrilla. We all enjoyed our pollo, vegetales y vino blanco and served a simple salsa to the side for those who wanted it.

Ensalada de taco - 122

2010-03-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

The quality of this picture does not match the quality of this meal. This is an old recipe that was given to me years ago by a woman I worked for in Denver, Colorado. She called it Mexican Chef Salad, but most people know it as TACO SALAD.

One of the first times Javier had dinner with me when we were dating, I made him this dish not knowing what a real live Mexican would think about such a concoction. It's principle ingredients are lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, kidney beans, grated cheese, taco meat, and crushed tortilla chips in a thick red French dressing. Javier loved it once he was able to find some salsa and sprinkle it all over his salad before eating it. Over the years we have added chopped red onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, and have taken out the taco meat and added cooked chicken breast. We have also learned to make it light by using low-fat or homemade dressings, less cheese, and baked tortilla chips. To this day - and many years after that first dinner in my home - Javier still loves TACO SALAD and can't wait for the first robins of Spring to signal the beginning of salad season after a winter of soups.

Carne asada -123

2010-03-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've blogged about our Mexican menus, and once again, I apologize. First I had to have the computer virus cleaned up and cleared out of my computer. Once that was done, I realized that the usual mechanism that I use for uploading pictures had disappeared. This took another couple of days to figure out. In the meantime, we were figuring out menus, cooking, taking pictures and eating - and running way behind.

During this time, my mother came to visit. That's another whole blog right there, but she isn't too keen on spicy Mexican food and we've had to adjust our eating habits a bit for her tastes while she's been here.

And then...we had to take our puppy, Coco, to the vet for some minor surgery. Javier became catatonic as he waited for the call to pick him up and bring him home. Once home, little Coco needed all kinds of extra care and attention. No one was thinking about Mexican food that day.

So, all backed up and ready to go, are some of the meals that we've had before, during and after the multiple traumas of a computer virus, doggie surgery, and a visit from my mother / Javier's suegra. A good CARNE ASADA with a big copa de vino tinto was just what was called for! While Javier grilled the carne de res, I made a nice salsa ranchera. With some fresh, warm corn tortillas, this was all that was needed to set things right...at least for one evening!

Discúlpame por favor

2010-03-21T07:36:00.000-07:00

I am currently running behind on my Mexican Meal blogs due to an enormous problem (virus) I had with my computer the other day. I think it's all been fixed, and the computer seems to be running better than before except for one thing: I am having trouble uploading the pictures from my camera that I post on the blog each day.

So, les pido paciencia. I ask for your patience while I get this last "bug" out. We've had a couple of great meals lately - shrimp, steak, salsas and arroz mexicano - but I will wait to tell you about them until we have the visual up and running again!

Muchas gracias y mil disculpas...

Pollo en achiote - 124

2010-03-18T21:34:00.001-07:00

Here is something totally different from all of the other meals we've been making for the past 5+ months... but first, a little history.

Years ago, a friend of mine by the name of María Alba, returned to Colorado from Mérida, Yucatán where she had been visiting her family. Among the little gifts she brought back from me were several cakes of achiote paste. I had no idea what to do with it, or what it was, and may have added a little to a sauce or a marinade. I really can't remember.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I visited the local Mexican market to look for some items we needed on our shelf. Once again I came across the achiote paste in a little red and yellow box, so decided to buy some and then find out later what to do with it. That was easy because there is a little recipe (and I mean little - we had to use a magnifying glass to read it) on the back of the little box.

Achiote is Spanish (coming into the Spanish language from the Aztecs' nahuatl ) for the annatto pigment coloring similar to a brick red that is derived from the seed of the plant. It is used in many foods as well as in paints and cosmetics such as lipstick. The paste is made of the ground seeds mixed with other seasonings, including garlic, and a small amount of oil as a binder. To make a sauce or marinade from the achiote paste, you rehydrate it by adding lemon juice, water and a bit of salt.

Once we made our marinade, we followed the recipe on the back of the box and added a cut-up fryer. We cubed some raw potatoes, peeled and cut up some carrots, and quartered a whole onion. After marinating the chicken for over an hour, all of this went into a foil pouch which we steamed for another hour on the stove top in the same steamer we use for making tamales. When the meal was done, we opened the foil pouch and found some juicy, fragrant pieces of red chicken with cooked potatoes, onions and carrots surrounding it.

Achiote is not spicy, so Javier said that he missed having a little "kick" in his meal. As I ate the chicken and a few of the vegetables, I recalled having had this dish many times before while living in Mexico and never realizing what I was eating. Looking back, I probably thought that I was eating chicken seasoned with paprika! It was really good tonight because the chicken was so moist. The next time I cook this dish, I will add some whole jalapeños to the foil pouch just for Javier!

Caldo Michi II - even better! - 125

2010-03-18T06:09:00.001-07:00

The first time we made CALDO MICHI from a recipe in an old cookbook of mine (Diana Kennedy) we were totally impressed. So easy to make using a minimum amount of ingredients, and very pleasing results. So, the other day, as Javier was getting through a cold (catarro) and nursing a sore throat, he asked if I'd make another round of CALDO MICHI. We discussed the fact that we'd featured it once already on the blog, and then decided that maybe we could improve on the first round, which was also excellent.

This time I used more cod (bacalao), more vegetables (carrots, zucchini, onions, garlic), a little bit more seasoning (sal, pimienta y orégano) and a little less canned jalapeños, which for all intents and purposes are the "secret ingredient" in this recipe. I didn't allow the fish to overcook one bit, giving it the minimum amount of time to first be quickly cooked in olive oil, then removed, and then added to the soup at the end to lend its flavor to the broth, but not enough time as to fall apart.

Better than ever it was! Mejor que nunca...

Lo siento - 126

2010-03-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

For the last two evenings I haven't made a real Mexican meal. Yesterday, Sunday, I made a beautiful TORTILLA ESPAÑOLA to take with me to a potluck supper where Spanish PAELLA and wines were being served in addition to salad and bread. There were a couple of bean dishes and an Italian polenta dish made with chard, but Mexican - no.

So then tonight...I had these insipid pork chops defrosted in the refrigerator and was going to brown them before bathing them in a hot and spicy tomato sauce, then serve with arroz, frijoles, guacamole, y tortillas. It turned out to be one of the most uninspiring meals we've made since we started this project, pictures and all. I set the table nicely, took a few pictures, and then when I saw them next to the blog I decided not to post them. The pictures were almost worse than the meal, which was edible, but not great.

Conclusions? Do something different, different, diferente with pork chops. TORTILLA ESPAÑOLA is an OK meal, but nothing groundbreaking there, either. And, it's Spanish...

Until tomorrow ~ hasta mañana.

Enchiladas de mole - 127

2010-03-13T18:24:00.000-08:00

It's not like we sit around and just decide to make mole one day. We probably wouldn't have all of the ingredients on hand, and even if we did, I'd probably be too busy to just stop everything and make mole there was nothing else in the house to eat, or someone got a sudden craving for the stuff.
No, we usually fix mole - and large quantities of it - around a special occasion, such as a birthday, or the holidays. I have fixed mole on occasion for my Spanish or history classes, but even that takes quite a bit of planning and a running start. Tonight's dinner - ENCHILADAS DE MOLE - was to be an experiment, and an easy one. We bought a jar of ready-made mole from Whole Foods, and we wanted to see how it tasted using a minimum amount of our effort and ingredients. We had made some good caldo de pollo earlier in the day, and had thrown in a few extra chicken breasts to use with tonight's dinner experiment.

It was quite easy to fix. I shredded the chicken breast meat and reheated it at the same time I heated the mole from a jar in a small skillet. I used the small skillet rather than a saucepan so that I could dip tortillas into the sauce before rolling the chicken into the inside of the enchilada. I warmed 7 corn tortillas in the microwave, dipped them one by one into the heated mole sauce from Whole Foods, filled them with tortilla and a bit of shredded queso fresco and then lined them up in a baking dish to keep warm while I whipped up some fresh guacamole to go with our dinner.

Simple, good, and quick - but not the best mole I'd ever tasted. A bit on the sweet side for me. This particular brand (or variety - whatever you call it) had been made with figs, which were the sweetener. I don't know if it was the figs or something else that was a bit on the sweet side, but it was a bit much for me. Not inedible and not even bad, but not the way I like my mole!

Carne deshebrada - 128

2010-03-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

The verb 'deshebrar' in Spanish means to unravel, or to separate into filaments, neither of which completely explains what we did to a brisket of beef yesterday. We trimmed it of all of the fat, then put it in the crock pot all day with onions, garlic and a chile chipotle sauce before removing it to a cutting board and then tearing it apart with two forks. It was like pulled pork, but the verb for pull in Spanish - jalar - just doesn't fit. I guess we did kind of unravel a beef brisket...

After separating the beef into filaments, we served it with warm corn tortillas and all of the usual suspects - guacamole, lechuga, queso fresco y salsa. It was a delicious filling for tacos despite the fact that we had eaten ground beef tacos earlier in the week. They are two totally different meals, and as I said before, with a large package of fresh tortillas sitting in the kitchen, you will continue to hear about tortilla-based main dishes in the next week.

Quesadillas con camarones - 129

2010-03-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

OK, so we're eating a lot of tortilla-based dishes these days. After the grilled pork loins a few nights ago, I requested some simpler, lighter meals.

We had three whole wheat tortillas in the refrigerator that needed to be used up. We had some shrimp in the freezer and a large block of pepper jack cheese. We had some frijoles pintos and tomato salsa left over from the other night, and one overripe avocado sitting in the fruit bowl. Time to make QUESADILLAS CON CAMARONES with guacamole, salsa, y frijoles on the side!

No tale to tell here. It was a simple, easy-to-fix dinner on our large grill. Javier had marinated the shrimp, so we grilled them first, then assembled the QUESADILLAS while the frijoles were reheating in the oven and I fixed the guacamole. Dinner was ready in less than 20 minutes!

Tacos de carne molida - 130

2010-03-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but I grew up eating tacos out of hard taco shells (Old El Paso, Lowry's Rosarita), and they were usually stale. But if you didn't know any different... Mom always fried up some greasy ground beef, seasoned it with a packaged mix of taco seasoning (which was totally full of MSG), and there began our tacos. On the table she would put an array of mismatched bowls full of shredded iceberg lettuce, grated Longhorn cheese (how Mexican!), and diced tomatoes. We would assemble our hard shelled tacos with the beef on the bottom of the shell, followed by the lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. The order depended on when you could grab the bowl of one of the items, grab a handful, and get it into the taco shell before the next bowl became available.

But here's the really good part of my taco story: Mom served our tacos with a bottle of ketchup on the table. No salsa, not even Tabasco sauce - ketchup! I can't say there's anything magical about the taste of Longhorn cheese mingling with ketchup and greasy ground beef in your mouth. But again, if you didn't know any different...

The first time I traveled to Mexico, I learned that a taco was anything that was served in a corn tortilla. It could be shredded chicken, beef (shredded, stewed or grilled), pork, fish, or even animal parts, such as the famous Mexican tacos de cabeza or tacos de lengua. One of my favorite ways to eat tacos in Mexico was to order tacos de carnitas - pork that was cooked on a vertical spit, then shaved away at with a very sharp knife for each individual order. But, ground beef?? The only time I ever saw ground beef in Mexico was in an albóndiga - a meatball!

Javier and I had a pound of grass fed, antibiotic free ground beef in the freezer, and not knowing what else to fix one evening - and craving tacos - we decided to make our own version of the ground beef taco. We cooked the meat with bell peppers, onions, and an all-natural taco seasoning from SAVORY in Denver. We bought some fresh corn tortillas and warmed them up on the comal. We crumbled some queso fresco, mixed up some guacamole, shredded some lettuce and made a nice tomato salsa from scratch.

I enjoyed the hybrid - a taste for US-style ground beef taco filling mixed with more authentic Mexican ingredients in a fresh, warm tortilla. Neither of us was disappointed!

Crepas de hongos y Chile Relleno de Elote - 132 y 131

2010-03-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

Last night we decided to do two meals together and make it a true vegetarian (but not vegan) feast. I had found some recipes in that old Mexican cookbook of mine for 1) CREPAS DE HONGOS CON SALSA DE CHILE POBLANO y 2) CHILE RELLENO DE ELOTE. It seemed like a good idea to do them together, and the results were fantastic. The two dishes complemented one another perfectly, and we served them with frijoles pintos on the side.

The CREPAS had a filling of mushrooms (hongos), onions (cebollas), garlic (ajo) and cilantro which were cooked in a minimal amount of corn oil - thank goodness / menos mal. The filling mixture was then tucked into some crepes we had made over the weekend, and the crepes were kept warm in the oven while we moved on to the sauce and the next dish.

The CHILE RELLENOS de ELOTE were made from some chiles poblanos that Javier had roasted on the grill several nights ago when the weather was nice. He then peeled and seeded them for me for later use. I made the filling of corn (when it comes off the cob it's called elote), epazote, y cebolla. This filling is put into the cavity of the roasted and peeled chile along with a small slice of queso fresco which melts beautifully once this go into the oven to be warmed through. (They don't really need cooking as the chiles and the relleno have already been cooked before assembly).

The sauce was a delicious mixture of sauteed onions, garlic, butter (oops!) a few chile poblano strips and cream. (I used whole milk to cut down on the calories) It is thickened with flour, but again I cut down on the amount. After everything has been sauteed, warmed up, and thickened, it is pureed before reheating and serving over the CHILE RELLENOS and the CREPAS.

Javier said that whatever the point system was for last night's meal, I had earned a 100, an 11 on a scale of 10, or an A+. I could take my pick!

Lomo de puerco - 133

2010-03-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we ate too much starch...healthy buckwheat and granola pancakes in the morning at a well-known local place; tamales for lunch; a biscotti in the afternoon with our coffee as we were out grocery shopping, and; bolillos in the evening with the queso fundido that we served with dinner. Today, we said to one another, we're all about protein and vegetables, no starch.

Good idea until I had to make 3 dozen arepas (a Venezuelan corn cake) for my classes tomorrow. We had to sample a few of them to make sure that they were OK for my students. They're not exactly my "cup of tea" but they're authentic and I'm sure the students will love them with the different toppings I've selected - dulce de leche, mermelada de guava, y crema fresca.

Dinner? We had just bought two small pork tenderloins, and Javier rubbed them with a seasoning mix that consisted of chile, comino, sal y ajo. We grilled the lomos along with some fresh green beans, seasoned both the green beans (ejotes verdes) and the lomo with a tiny amount of olive oil and lime juice - and that was it - nuestra cena / our dinner! Simple, but it hit the spot and we've got some tremendous leftovers for mañana.

Otro Queso Fundido - 134

2010-03-07T07:40:00.001-08:00

Last night we had company over for a delicious and healthy meal of chicken on skewers, raw vegetables and dip, and sliced fresh pineapple for dessert. It seemed too healthy, so I decided to make something else to go with the meal.

I made a QUESO FUNDIDO con ALCACHOFAS - a hot cheese 'fondue' with artichokes - which also has hot peppers as a main ingredient. The cheese I used in the recipe was the pepper jack variety that has diced jalapeños in it, but that wasn't enough. Since we had roasted and peeled a large number of chiles poblanos the other day (and you may be hearing more about those over the next couple of days as we start using them) I decided to dice some of those into the QUESO FUNDIDO to make it spicier and more appealing.

You can serve QUESO FUNDIDO as an appetizer, sort of like a hot artichoke dip, with a good sturdy tortilla chip, or warm tortillas, either flour or corn. Since this was part of our dinner menu last night, I bought some bolillos (Mexican hard rolls) and sliced them for people to enjoy with their dinner - with or without the QUESO FUNDIDO on top.

I wish I'd made more because the chicken skewers which I'd bought already prepared and ready for the grill were no big deal. In fact, we were all adding more of the sauce at the table to them to give them some flavor. The raw veggies with the white bean dip and the QUESO FUNDIDO went over much better!

Tamales - 135

2010-03-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Today we were at a local farmer's market where people were selling all kinds of homemade salsas, barbecue sauces, baked goods and TAMALES. Everything looked good, and it had been a while since we'd had a good TAMAL, so we decided to buy 1/2 dozen and see if we liked them.

Remember: I didn't promise to cook Mexican food every day. I only promised to try and it eat every day. So far, so good, but it is hard when you're on a trip with other people or when you're sick. Today I had no good excuse, although I could claim to still be recovering from last week's bout of bronchitis.

TAMALES are not hard to make, but they're time consuming and you need a lot of space and a helper or two, if possible. My kitchen is small and I have found that I have to move the whole tamal making operation out onto the dining room table, which then makes a big mess everywhere. So, if I can buy good ones - I do.

We had two for lunch today - uno de puerco de chile rojo y el otro de pollo y chile jalapeño. They were both delicious, and so much so that I wondered if the masa (dough) had been made with manteca (lard) in the traditional way. I console myself by saying that I only ate 1/2 of each tamal equaling one whole one...

When talking about TAMALES remember that one is a TAMAL and the -e- only gets added to the end when you're also adding an -s- to pluralize. There is no such thing as a tamale. If you think you've seen it that way over the years, it's just a common misspelling of the word.

Lenguado con espinacas - 136

2010-03-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is a recipe straight out of a cookbook, and one I wouldn't think of as Mexican until I ate it and tasted the chiles in the filling and the sauce. It was very good and I wish I'd made more!

LENGUADO CON ESPINACAS - Filet of sole with spinach - was a perfect meal for a Friday during Lent. After laying the fish filets out on paper towels to soak up excess moisture, I lightly salted and peppered them. I made the relleno (filling or stuffing) from chopped spinach, finely diced white onion, a finely diced chile serrano,grated cotija cheese, salt and pepper to taste (although you don't need much since the queso cotija is naturally salty) and a little olive oil to bind it all together. Before filling the filets, I put two of them together, overlapping them a bit where the relleno was spread over them. Then I rolled them up and placed them in a baking dish with the seam side down.

(Sorry you can't see the spinach filling in this picture, but it's there).

The sauce was a rather traditional looking white sauce with lots of butter, so I made a few changes and used less butter, more skim milk, and crushed red pepper. It was good, but Javier commented that he might have preferred just a nice cream sauce because the filet filling was already spicy. (And he thought my sauce looked a bit like Thai peanut sauce). We ate the LENGUADO CON ESPINACAS with some brown rice on the side.

We will repeat this dish sometime next month since we still have loads of chopped spinach (espinacas) from our garden in the freezer and will work on the sauce.

Sopa de fideos - 137

2010-03-03T18:27:00.001-08:00

This is one of the most Mexican recipes I have, even if it doesn't look like very Mexican. On my first trip to Mexico many, many years ago, I stayed in the home of Doña Mercedes Gil de Vaca. We called her Doña Meche. She was an excellent cook, and every meal every day was a small masterpiece. Several times a week we would have la SOPA DE FIDEOS before our main course, but since the SOPA DE FIDEOS was so good, I used to think that it could have easily been our main course if she had only served more!Other pastas such as alphabet, small shells, or bow ties can be made into similar soups, but the SOPA DE FIDEOS of my youth still stands out as the original.

FIDEOS are thin little vermicelli noodles. You can buy them nested or already broken apart. The trick to making a good soup is to first brown the FIDEOS in oil with some garlic, and then add the tomato sauce before adding the chicken or vegetable stock. The tomato sauce needs to "brown" a little along with the FIDEOS and garlic.

After the stock is added, it's wise to adjust the seasoning and add some cilantro for good measure before covering the pot and allowing the FIDEOS to simmer on low for 20-30 minutes. They are then served as soup in a bowl and can be garnished with queso fresco o queso cotija.

In tonight's picture you'll see some guacamole to the side. This is the salad part of the meal, and can be eaten on warm corn tortillas as tacos de guacamole or on tostadas with a little more of the crumbled queso fresco o queso cotija sprinkled on top. It's a very quick, easy and economical meal, and Javier commented on how good it went down on a cold, snowy day.

Salmon a la parrilla con salsa chipotle - 138

2010-03-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

I'd been craving salmon for over a week, but kept telling myself that any kind of salmon (salmón en español) was probably not the most Mexican type of fish I could be craving. This is the Northwest, and sometimes we take salmon for granted. One time I ordered grilled salmon for lunch when I was in Argentina, and as I waited to be served I talked myself into believing that it was going to be mediocre and the only reason I'd ordered it was to stay on my diet. When it was served with a salad and grilled vegetables, it turned out to be the best salmon I'd ever had. So, maybe there are great salmon dishes in Mexico, too, and I just haven't had the pleasure yet.

Before I get back to the salmon, one thing I'd been wanting to do, and that I'd eaten in Mexico on a trip to Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast was grilled pineapple. We had a beautiful pineapple sitting in our fruit bowl here at home, and I decided that no matter what I decided to do with the salmon to make it Mexican, we would grill pineapple slices, too.

In the meantime, I found a recipe for a raspberry / chipotle sauce that can be served on any grilled meat, including fish. Raspberries - called moras or frambuesas in Spanish - are not all that popular in some parts of Mexico, but they're not totally unknown. Where my husband is from they call any berry that's not a strawberry a mora. So, having some fresh raspberry jam on hand (made by my good friend Renata), I heated it through and then added some pureed chiles chipotles to the simmering sauce. It was wicked!

Javier grilled the salmon along with some sliced zucchini and the pineapple slices, and then we served the fish with the sauce on top. It's never a good idea to smother the delicate flavor of the salmon with an overpowering sauce, so we started with a little and added as we ate.

It was an unusual dinner, but unusual in the very best sense of the word. Different, delicious and spicy!

Burritos de Pollo - 139

2010-03-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

Today's a milestone...I now have fewer than 100 Mexican meals to complete before finishing this part of the blog! And I have to honestly say that I am not sick of Mexican food. It's been a lot of fun and muy delicioso along the way.

Tonight we used some leftover grilled chicken and some leftover pinto beans combined with some leftover enchilada sauce and some new whole wheat tortillas to make BURRITOS DE POLLO. Javier shredded the chicken and cooked it (again) with onions and seasonings. After mashing some of the frijoles pintos that I cooked yesterday and heating some flour tortillas, he filled them with about 2 T of the frijoles, about 1/2 cup of the shredded chicken and onion filling, 2 T of grated cheese, and then rolled them before ladling sauce and sprinkling additional cheese on top. For being a semi-recycled meal, it was excellent. We ate the BURRITOS with a little shredded lettuce to the side, and felt that we'd included all of the major food groups in one simple meal.

BURRITOS of any kind are really an American invention, although they have caught on more recently in Mexico. I remember a time in the 1980s when you could hardly find a flour tortilla in a local market and had to ask someone if they knew where you could buy some, or who in the neighborhood would make them for you. Tortillas de harina (flour tortillas) have been somewhat popular in Northern Mexico for a while, and were used for burritos de machaca con huevo, a dish made with scrambled eggs, dried beef called machaca, and salsa. They were very good, but a far cry from the bean and cheese or bean, beef and cheese burritos being sold on every corner in the US. New Mexico has some of the best smothered burritos I have ever eaten. But that's another story...

Carne asada - 140

2010-02-28T18:08:00.000-08:00

Hace muy buen tiempo aquí en Oregón - we had beautiful weather here in Oregon today, so we decided to light the grill and do some steaks - CARNE ASADA.

A typical CARNE ASADA, which is grilled steak, is served with salsa, guacamole, frijoles, arroz y tortillas, but since both of us wanted to make it light, we cut out the arroz. Earlier in the day I had made a salsa from tomatillos, ajo y chiles chipotles. As dinner approached and the steaks were on the grill, I made a guacamole in a traditional Mexico City style (chunky), and then warmed some frijoles pintos that I had cooked yesterday. The last thing I did before the CARNE ASADA came off the grill was warm the fresh tortillas that I had picked up at the tortillería today.

We served dinner with a wonderful Oregon Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley, one from the Bernard Machado Vineyards (2006). It was very good, as was our dinner - a one-day-late celebration of our 26th wedding anniversary!

Chile relleno de mariscos - 141

2010-02-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Credit where credit is due. This was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten, but I didn't make it. Still recovering from last week's bout of bronchitis (bronquitis en español) I just wasn't up to cooking dinner last night, but after a week of sopas, ensaladas y arroz I was ready to eat something GOOD.

I went across the street to a local place called El Rodeo. They have an extensive menu, and it was hard to choose something to eat, but not just because of the variety. I found most of the items on the menu very expensive for Mexican dishes I can produce at home for a fraction of the cost AND know what all of the ingredients are. So, I was just about to give up when I spotted the CHILE RELLENO DE MARISCOS in the a la carta section of the menu. $7.95!

I have to say that it was worth every penny. It was large, full of the seafood promised on the menu, and the sauce was delicious - although I'm quite sure it was fattening because it was similar to a spicy Alfredo-type sauce with peppers and green onions thrown in for good measure. The sauce could have doubled as a queso dip of some kind, and maybe it does. But, for someone hungry for Mexican food, and not wanting rice, beans and bland red sauce all over something, it was perfect.

One other thing: the staff at the restaurant could not have been more cordial. After one man explained what the CHILE was to me, then went back to the kitchen to order it, another one came to the front desk and visited with me in Spanish while they finished the order. Another woman came up front and joined the conversation, and finally the original order-taker (he may have been the owner or manager) arrived with my CHILE RELLENO DE MARISCOS. Since Javier wasn't here to enjoy this meal with me, it is one I will be attempting on my own in the near future and with a low-calorie sauce. Stay tuned!

Taquitos de pollo - 142

2010-02-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

Ya estoy mejor y estoy cocinando de nuevo...Now I'm better and I'm cooking again! Sorry for the lack of posts in the past couple of days, but I've been sick with bronchitis and haven't done much in the kitchen besides heating leftovers, making coffee and tea, and drinking lots of water with my daily round of medication...

Today I felt a lot better, so I decided to do something with the tortillas and some chicken that I had cooked up earlier in the week. TAQUITOS DE POLLO are very easy to make, especially if you are able to live with ones that aren't fried until crispy and that are browned in a hot skillet coated with olive oil spray.

Years ago I used to cook chicken, shred it, and season it with lots of red salsa (La Tamazula), salt and pepper before placing the shredded meat into the center of a corn tortilla, which I rolled tight and then fried in vegetable oil. At first I used toothpicks to secure the tightly rolled tortillas, but later I would do one taquito at a time and hold it closed with tongs while it fried.

Now that we've moved away from fried foods, I've gone to a system of warming the corn tortillas so that they roll nicely around the same kind of chicken filling, and then I place them into a small hot skillet which has been sprayed with olive oil spray. The small skillet is important because that way the taquitos can be placed together tightly like sardines in a can and not roll open while they're browning. It's also easy to roll them over all at the same time.

Once the taquitos are browned and slightly crispy (although never quite as much as they were when they were fried - lo siento) they should be served hot with an avocado sauce. This sauce is different from guacamole in that it is not just mashed avocados, but rather avocados mashed with either sour cream, mayonnaise, or crema mexicana in addition to seasonings. Tonight I mixed my smoothly mashed avocados with some nonfat yogurt, chopped chives, crushed red pepper, lime juice and some salt. It was muy deliciosa with the TAQUITOS DE POLLO, and I don't have to feel guilt about too many calories!

Pollo con vegetales - 143

2010-02-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

The weather has been much better here lately, but mostly to look at. The skies are clear and blue, but temperatures are still in the 30s and 40s. A couple of nights ago, Javier just couldn't resist lighting up the outdoor grill because it looked like grilling weather. While he grilled our dinner, he was bundled up in a fleece jacket and a down vest.

Before cooking some chicken and vegetables on the grill, he had marinated them in a combination of soy sauce, white wine, olive oil and crushed red pepper. Once everything was grilled, all I had to do was cut it up and toss it lightly (sort of like a stir fry) in a hot skillet. I then served the mixture of hot, grilled chicken and vegetables with some warm corn tortillas.

I haven't had a lot of appetite lately with this flu that I've had (going on 5 days now) and I can't taste much, either. I'm sure it was all delicious, though. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me today.

Otro caldo de pollo - 144

2010-02-22T06:50:00.001-08:00

Not much to say about CALDO DE POLLO that hasn't been said already. I have been very sick with something awful, possibily the H1N1 virus, so Javier made me a lovely CALDO before leaving on his trip that I could heat up every day while he was gone.

If it looks greasy, it is! I read somewhere that it's something in the chicken fat that has the power to cure the common cold. Whatever I've got, I decided that I'd use every weapon in my arsenal to try and wipe it out, and asked Javier to make the soup with all kinds of chicken pieces full of skin and bones. Huesos y pellejo.

I skipped the usual addition of something spicy - a chopped pepper or salsa, for example - and just squeezed some lime juice into the broth before adding some diced avocado and eating the whole bowl of soup minus the chicken skin. It was delicious, and about all I could manage to eat. I also skipped the tortillas and rice that are traditionally served alongside a good CALDO.

Enchiladas rojas de Queso - 145

2010-02-20T17:04:00.000-08:00

Some days nothing beats a good enchilada. No hay nada mejor que una buena enchilada.

Javier is getting ready to leave for a week, so he asked me what I wanted for dinner last night. I've been sick with a cold, so I figured I'd better think fast while he was still here to cook and making such an offer. I don't know why, but enchiladas came to mind. ENCHILADAS ROJAS DE QUESO seemed like a good idea since we had so much cheese in the refrigerator that we needed to eat before he left, and Javier makes a great red sauce (salsa roja) from scratch.

These have got to be the easiest thing to make once the sauce is ready, and, by the way, you can also buy red enchilada sauce in a can. It's out there, and some of it is not half bad. We grated up a queso fresco, heated some corn tortillas, rolled the cheese into the tortillas, and then ladled the red sauce over the enchiladas.

While they were heating in the oven and the cheese was melting a bit, we made some guacamole and shredded some lettuce to go on top. Sometimes we eat enchiladas with rice and beans, but last night we just ate them with the guacamole on top and to the side. They were a great dinner for the end of the week; for Lent; and (once again) for using up what's left in the refrigerator!

Paella Mexicana - 146

2010-02-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

Several days ago we bought a bag of something called mixed seafood in the freezer section of the store thinking we'd make some kind of luscious soup. As the week was winding down, and as I was contemplating what we actually had in the house to cook with one evening, I realized that we just didn't have all of the ingredients I would want to make a good soup. And, I didn't feel like making a quick trip to the store.

Now, I know we made a rice dish last week (see MEXICAN FRIED RICE), but while reaching into the cupboard for some of the ingredients, I noticed that I still had a half bag of paella rice. I knew that I had some saffron, too - not much, but enough to color our dish yellow rather than impart much flavor. So, I decided to come up with a combination between this traditional Spanish meal (paella) and something Mexican. I would make my Mexican paella with the seafood, rice, saffron (azafrán), tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic. The Mexican part? That would be chiles serranos instead of bell peppers.

When we opened the bag of now defrosted frozen mixed seafood, we discovered that it had some of that fake crabmeat in it. Boo. But it did have other good stuff like squid (calamar), octopus (pulpo), shrimp (camarones) and clams (almejas).

It totally worked! The pictures may not be the greatest, and they make the finished paella look a bit greasy when it wasn't at all. We served a nice cold white wine with our MEXICAN PAELLA, sliced some avocado on the side and had one of the best meals we'd had all week!

Chuletas de Puerco a la Naranja - 147

2010-02-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago we bought some beautiful pork chops at the store. I think we may have even had a coupon which made their price very reasonable. As we were buying them, Javier and I were pondering how to cook another Mexican meal with pork chops. Yes, there's always the grill, but it is the middle of February. We'd already experimented with different sauces on chicken, lamb chops and steaks, so we'd have to think hard before putting these chops on our blog.

One of the seasonings we were given for Christmas is one that is just for marinating meat. You add it to 1/2 cup of orange juice - period - and then marinate your chops, chicken and/or steaks before grilling them. Yes, the weather was up in the 50s yesterday, so we decided it was safe to plan a grilled meal.

I found some leftover frijoles charros in the freezer and defrosted them before reheating them to serve on the side. Javier made some amazing guacamole to go with the chuletas y frijoles, too. I say amazing because the avocados were so buttery-smooth that the guacamole came out with a silky texture.

Well, the chuletas were thick (gruesas), so as the outside began to char, we waited and waited for the inside to cook to a desired temperature. When they were finally done, they looked a little crispy on the outside, and the grilling time had obliterated most of the spicy orange marinade. Don't get me wrong...the chuletas were good and they remained juicy, but we could barely taste the marinade. The frijoles charros y el guacamole had more pizazz.

Tostadas de Atún - 148

2010-02-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

LAS TOSTADAS DE ATÚN ~ una cena super-sencilla!

Don't ask me why...this evening we decided to make something that we don't normally eat in the Winter, and usually reserve for our trips to México when we're economizing. TOSTADAS DE ATÚN could be appetizers, or a lunch dish, but dinner???

I think the heavier dishes over the weekend did me in, and I came home from work thinking of something lighter. Javier had made some tostadas out of some older tortillas, and I had been thinking of ways to fix them with beans, chicken, guacamole, salsa - all of the usual suspects. De repente - suddenly - I remembered all of the wonderful tostada meals we'd eaten in México when the kids were younger and we were watching our budget on family road trips, staying with Javier's family, and saving our money for other things. One of my favorite tostadas came to mind, the one made with tuna.

Keeping it low calorie is not hard if you eliminate over half of the mayonnaise. I chopped tomatoes, onions, avocado, celery, and a chile serrano before adding the tuna and mixing it all together with some lime juice, salt, pepper, 1 T of mayonnaise, and 2 T of nonfat plain yogurt. I then mounded the ensalada de atún onto the fresh tostadas, chopped some lettuce, and garnished them with the lettuce and a very small amount of queso fresco. I wish I'd had some fresh cilantro for garnish, but there was none to be found this evening in the refrigerator.

Maravillosas they were! A simply perfect, economical meal on a Monday evening.

Caldo de Res / Colita - 149

2010-02-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

Ayer fue el Día de los Enamorados. I wanted to make something special for dinner, and for about a week had been contemplating something on the grill, like a steak, served with a special sauce. When we went to the store to look for something good to grill, everything seemed unusually expensive. Color me cynical, but it may have had something to do with Valentine's Day coming up. Doesn't every meat eater want to have a nice steak - or roast - for a special occasion? We even considered salmon, but couldn't find any that wasn't farm raised - or any that was affordable, either.

As I was looking things over in the meat counter, I noticed the beef oxtails. Javier and I used to buy these years ago for an inexpensive beef soup called CALDO DE RES, but haven't bought them recently because they're usually fatty. These particular ones I was looking at seemed to be very meaty, and when I opened them at home to began the cooking process, what little fat there was I was able to cut off before braising.

Our recipe for CALDO DE RES involves braising (as I mentioned) the oxtails in a very hot pot, then adding water to cover, garlic, bay leaf (hoja de laurel), salt and pepper. We allow them to simmer for an hour or two as the first step in making the broth. After that, we remove the oxtails, strain the broth, and remove any grease there may be. We then continue the process by adding vegetables - carrots, squash, cabbage, chayote, and small ears of corn on the cob when they're available. We season the soup with minimal amounts of salt, pepper and cilantro, then strain a well-cooked, pureed chile colorado into the broth.

CALDO DE RES is best served with hot rice and tortillas on the side, lime juice squeezed into the broth right before eating, and something cold to drink. Being Día de los Enamorados yesterday, we served wine with our soup (although I think Javier may prefer beer, and I'll remember that for another occasion) and later in the evening had a dessert of fresas con crema. Loads of calories - I know - but worth the effort and the eating!

Papas con Chile Verde - 150

2010-02-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Javier and I have traveled to New Mexico on several occasions, and one of our favorite things about New Mexico is the Mexican food. It's not exactly Mexican, but it's certainly not Tex Mex or anything else. It's just muy buena.

On one of our first trips we ordered a main dish of pork chops (chuletas de puerco) that came with a side of potatoes. The potatoes had been peeled, cut into chunks, and cooked, then simmered in a green chile sauce which had small chunks of pork in it. I hate to admit this, but the potatoes were much better than the grilled chuletas which seemed dry to us. Ever since that trip to New Mexico, which may have been our second or third, we have always saved some of the chile verde that Javier makes on occasion just so that we can serve it over cooked potatoes. We usually eat it as a main dish. It can be served with warm tortillas and cheese and made into tacos, or all by itself on a plate with a salad on the side.

One of our favorite places for chile verde, tamales and Mexican cooking ingredients is Chimayo in Northern New Mexico. There is the very famous (and large) restaurant outside of town, but there are also a good number of smaller places that sell excellent, economical food. Be sure to visit them if you've ever in the area!

Mexican Fried Rice - 151

2010-02-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

The other day I noticed some leftover white rice in the refrigerator and decided that I would have to incorporate it into another meal. We don't eat white rice very often, so I wanted to do something that would spiff it up a bit and make it seem healthy.

Remember the chicken chorizo - the one I was so happy about because it was virtually grease-free and delicious? I had one left, so decided to create our own version of fried rice using the leftover rice and the chorizo as the two principle ingredients.

In addition to the chorizo, we diced up a lot of veggies - carrots, onions, peppers, and celery to give it some crunch - and sauteed them along with the chorizo once it was cooked. To this mixture we added a chopped up scrambled egg pancake and the arroz, a tiny bit of chicken broth, and then let the skillet do the rest. Before eating, we garnished it with some chopped cilantro. (Javier says that we should have sprinkled some diced peanuts - cacahuates - on top before eating, but I don't know).

What can I say? It turned out spicy, delicious, and filling. We used up the white rice that had been sitting in the refrigerator, and ate our vegetables all in one meal.

Chicken Caesar Salad - 152

2010-02-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the Caesar Salad was invented in Mexico? Tijuana, to be exact.

After weeks and weeks of soups, casseroles, grilled meats, and platos calientes, I decided that I needed to eat a salad as a main course. We also have a good recipe for a Caesar salad dressing that calls for queso cotija, cilantro, pepitas y chiles poblanos. The recipe we have makes a lot of dressing, so when we're not having salad, it makes a great dip for vegetables, too.

CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD is really just a romaine lettuce salad with some cooked chicken on it. It's really the dressing that makes the meal. As you can see from the picture, we also added some thinly sliced red onion and jalapeños to our romaine lettuce and cooked chicken salad. (We are still creating dinners out of what we find in the refrigerator). What you don't see - and what we added at the last minute before tossing the salad - were some of the baked tortilla strips we'd made the previous night for the Sopa de Tortilla. We tossed them into the salad to give it some crunch.

Salads always seem better in the summer, but last night's was a real treat. We both heaped tons of salad onto our plates and enjoyed something we hadn't made since last September!

Here is the history of the Caesar salad:

1924 - Most historians believe that Caesar salad honors restaurateur Caesar Cardini (1896-1956), who invented it in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924 on the Fourth of July weekend. It is said that on this busy weekend, Cardini was running low on food and he put together a salad for his guests from what was left over in the kitchen. His original recipe included romaine, garlic, croutons, and Parmesan cheese, boiled eggs, olive oil and Worcestershire sauce. The original salad was prepared at tableside. When the salad dressing was ready, the romaine leaves were coated with the dressing and placed stem side out, in a circle and served on a flat dinner plate, so that the salad could be eaten with the fingers.

In 1926, Alex Cardini joined his brother, Caesar, at the Tijuana restaurant. Alex, an ace pilot in the Italian Air Force during World War I, added other ingredients, one of which was anchovies, and named the salad Aviator's Salad" in honor of the pilots from Rockwell Field Air Base in San Diego. It is reported that Alex's version became very popular, and later this salad was renamed "Caesar Salad." Caesar was said to be staunchly against the inclusion of anchovies in this mixture, contending that the Worcestershire sauce was what actually provided that faint fishy flavor. He also decreed that only Italian olive oil and imported Parmesan cheese be used in the dressing.

Over the years, it became quite the thing to do - to drive to Tijuana for a Caesar Salad. Californians, including Hollywood celebrities such as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and W.C. fields dined at Caesar's to escape the Prohibition laws in the U.S. In Europe, Caesar's Salad was also appearing in restaurants. Julia Child, famous cookbook author, wrote about Caesar Salad in her cookbook From Julia Child's Kitchen:

One of my early remembrances of restaurant life was going to Tijuana in 1925 or 1926 with my parents, who were wildly excited that they should finally lunch at Caesar's restaurant. Tijuana, just south of the Mexican border from San Diego, was flourishing then, in the prohibition era. . . Words spread about Tijuana and the good life, and about Caesar Cardini's restaurant, and about Caesar's salad.

My parents, of course, ordered the salad. Caesar himself rolled the big cart up to the table, tossed the romaine in a great wooden bowl, and I wish I could say I remembered his every move, but I don't. They only thing I see again clearly is the eggs. I can see him break 2 eggs over that romaine and roll them in, the greens going all creamy as the eggs flowed over them. Two eggs in a salad? Two one-minute coddled eggs? And garlic-flavored croutons, and grated Parmesan cheese? It was a sensation of a salad from coast to coast, and there were even rumblings of its success in Europe.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/SaladHistory.htm

Sopa de Tortilla - 153

2010-02-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

There are as many recipes for SOPA DE TORTILLA as there are Spanish classes having potlucks at the end of the school year. I say this because I got this very excellent recipe from a former student of mine at Colorado State University (my alma mater) who brought this soup to our end-of-the-year Spanish class potluck. It has been my favorite ever since, and that's been around 11 years.

Almost every Mexican restaurant here in town also serves SOPA DE TORTILLA. Some serve a watery caldo de pollo with chicken stock, over-cooked vegetables, and a few pieces of chicken breast meat. They cover up their little secret with tons of tortilla chips, grated cheese, and some avocado cubes. You can't see what's underneath until you eat all of that stuff off the top, and by then, it's too late to notice that the soup underneath is, well, lackluster.

The reason that I like this soup so much is that it is loaded with goodies (frijoles, tomates, chiles, carne de pollo, y vegetales) and the toppings play a supporting role. In fact, we have eaten this soup many times without them. It is just excellent - rich, thick and spicy. One bowl is a meal in itself, and there's no need for a side dish.

Thank you and credit go to my former student, Patty.

Turkey Picadillo - 154

2010-02-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

I was really down after last night's disappointing nachos. I want to say again that they were buenos, but not super buenos.

Tonight's dinner set us back on track. Javier fixed TURKEY PICADILLO using an old recipe that I got in Mexico years ago for the filling of "real" chiles rellenos. The original recipe calls for ground beef, but since we're watching what we eat, we decided to give it a try with ground turkey tonight. I have to say - it was exceptional. Super bueno.

Picadillo is a combination of ground meat, potatoes, diced carrots, onions, raisins, sliced olives and seasonings. Mucha sazón. It is all cooked together in a light tomato sauce, or diced tomatoes, and then can be used as a filling for chiles rellenos, or served on it's own as a main dish. It is surprisingly similar to what we consider taco meat - the ground beef filling that we load into those hard taco shells and that (sometimes) has diced onions and bell peppers cooked into the meat with some seasoning.

Picadillo, because of the added tomatoes, vegetables, raisins and olives, is a lot juicier than what we consider to be taco meat. It is delicious served over rice. Supposedly it has a long history dating back to the Moors' invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). The Arabic influence on Spanish cuisine, which later traveled into the Americas, is said to have brought together different flavors and condiments such as raisins, potatoes, olives, and spices. The Mexicans, I believe, made it better by adding their native chiles. It seems that every Latin American country has some version of picadillo, including the Argentines who make something similar and use it as a filling for empanadas.

Ours, made with turkey tonight, was really good. We served it with rice, beans, and corn tortillas. I kept wanting more of the picadillo because it was so flavorful, but remembered to keep controlling my portions. Since we had a lot left over, stay tuned to tomorrow's blog to see what we do with the rest!

Nachos - 155

2010-02-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

I learned something important this evening - NACHOS need to be naughty.

I spent lots of time yesterday and today coming up with a way to make healthy NACHOS and after all of the effort, they were just so-so. They weren't bad, but I felt like I had to push myself to go back for seconds.

We baked some old tortillas into chips and then salted them lightly. We made our own beans without any fats. We bought lowfat cheese, and decided to skip the sour cream on the top. Javier made some good guacamole to go on top, but without the salty chips and all of the usual "goo" that goes on NACHOS, it just didn't add up to delicioso.

Today is SuperBowl Sunday. We are not big football fans, but we have a family tradition of eating SuperBowl party food on these days. So, several days ago I decided I'd make NACHOS and try giving them a healthy twist. And, do you know where the healthy twist should have been? Earlier in the day, or earlier in the week. I should have saved myself calories for the real deal: super-delicious salty chips smothered in chili, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and salsa. Whatever it is you're supposed to ladle over the chips, including sour cream and guacamole.

Ours were OK, but just barely. They were lacking the naughty element. This is one of those nights when we say we tried, but let's get back to the drawing board.

Crema de Chile Poblano con Maiz - 156

2010-02-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

Un buen día para sopa...Yesterday was a good day for soup. We woke up to heavy snow and cold temperatures, and since we had some roasted chiles poblanos in the refrigerator, I decided to make soup. I used a recipe that a Spanish student gave me a couple of years ago.

First I peeled and diced a couple of potatoes, which I boiled. While they were simmering, I removed all of the seeds and veins from the chiles poblanos and put them into the blender. I added some chicken stock, and when the diced potatoes were done and ready to be blended, I added them. (I held back some to add to the finished soup). I pureed this mixture and then poured it into a soup pot where I added the corn, some milk (not cream!), the remaining diced potatoes and some seasonings. Then I let it simmer on low.

We ate it for lunch with a little shredded queso fresco on top and some fresh, warm tortillas on the side. Nothing could have been better on this cold, snowy day!

Pollo y ejotes verdes - 157

2010-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

It's simple: I have to keep losing more weight.

I defrosted some chicken breasts, bought some fresh green beans (ejotes verdes) and cooked them all on the indoor grill. It's snowing here.

Previously I had seasoned all of them with lemon juice, a little olive oil, and one of the new Mexican seasonings that came in the gift pack I received for Christmas. We heated the grill as high as it would go, and started to grill the breasts, followed by some chiles serranos (seen in the picture on top of the chicken), and then finally tossed the ejotes onto the dry grill. Javier heated the last two flour tortillas to go with his dinner. That reminds me...the fresh corn tortillas come out today.

Sencilla, elegante y muy deliciosa. Y muy fácil también. That sums up our dinner last night - simple, elegant, delicious and very easy!

Camarones al Mojo de Ajo - 158

2010-02-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned one time before, all Mexican food does NOT have to be spicy and covered with sour cream, guacamole and salsa. Some dishes are quite simple and not spicy at all. Sometimes what makes them truly Mexican is eating them with rice and tortillas on the side.

Tonight's dinner was a perfect example of something traditionally Mexican - CAMARONES AL MOJO DE AJO - yet not exactly what you'd order if you were looking for something, well, Mexican. We have all come to expect Mexican food that can often be quite picante.

For this dinner we minced lots of garlic and sauteed it in butter. We tossed in the shelled shrimp, then allowed it to cook quickly, while adding a dash of crushed red pepper and about 1/4 cup of white wine. NOTE: most traditional recipes call for heaps of butter, but we cut back on the usual amount and added the white wine to make the recipe less fattening.

At the last moment I added the Thai red peppers just for show along with some thinly sliced green onions. They make the picture look better, but don't change the essence of the recipe. We served ours over some brown rice because of the lovely sauce, and served just a couple of warmed corn tortillas on the side.

¡Quesadillas! - 159

2010-02-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

As you've noticed from our blog, we have been eating LOTS of chicken, turkey and pork, and occasionally we've done some things with seafood. Lately I'd been feeling like I just wanted to come home from work and eat something simple.

We decided to have some simple QUESADILLAS tonight. My first QUESADILLAS years ago were the fried ones we'd eat in Guadalajara for late evening snacks. They consisted of corn tortillas, white cheese, and were fried in vegetable oil. We'd add whatever kind of salsa was handy - be it a fresh one leftover from the afternoon meal or a bottled one because there was nothing else available. These QUESADILLAS were delicious, but we won't even get into the calorie count.

My next round of QUESADILLAS were the ones that I could make in some of the first microwave ovens that came out. I'd take two flour tortillas, and in between them I'd lay several pieces of very thinly sliced cheddar cheese. I'd sprinkle the cheese with bottled Rosarita taco sauce because that's what was available at the time in the home I lived in. Then I'd microwave the whole deal until the cheese was melted, the tortillas were soft, and the sauce was runny. I'd cut it up like a pizza on a cutting board, and that was lunch - almost every day.

Years later, and while working in a Mexican restaurant, I discovered that it was entirely possible to make QUESADILLAS that were cooked on a grill with several kinds of cheese; that you could make them with either flour or corn tortillas; and they could be garnished on the side with salsa, guacamole and sour cream. Now, I love them with grilled chicken, steak, mushrooms, or spinach - or all of the aforementioned - but I do not like dipping them into or spreading them with sour cream. No way José.

Tonight's QUESADILLAS were on whole wheat, whole grain tortillas with modest amounts of cheese, but lots of a leftover mango salsa and fresh guacamole. They were ... ¡PERFECTAS!

Sopa de Pollo con Vegetales - 160

2010-02-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe that after 80 meals we're 1/3 of our way towards our goal of eating 240 Mexican meals before heading to Argentina in June. Yikes - I just thought of something. If we don't make our goal, then I'll be hunting for chiles y chorizos in Argentina markets to finish off this project.

Actually, last year while I was there I fixed a pretty mean guacamole for a small group. We were only able to find some Doritos brand tortilla chips in the closest supermarket, but all the same, the guacamole turned out great. No problems finding avocados (which they call paltas in Argentina) or chiles serranos y cilantro. As a side note, the lady I was staying with had a new bottle of tequila that she was anxious to open and try, so I gave her a little lesson in drinking shots with salt and limes.

But seriously folks...where were we? Last night's dinner of SOPA DE POLLO CON VEGETALES was perfect because we are continuing to experience very cold temperatures, and I came home from work feeling chilled. It was made with some frozen chicken stock and shredded chicken that we had on hand plus a variety of vegetales - carrots, corn, celery, zucchini, cabbage and canned tomatoes.

As with other soups we make, we first cut a chile chipotle into the bottom of the soup bowl, and then ladle the soup on top. We serve the bowls with chopped avocado and a squeeze (or two) of lime juice. Javier had some heated corn tortillas, but I just went for a big bowl of soup. I have to say...some of the Mexican soups are the greatest - las mejores.

White Bean Chili with Turkey - 161

2010-02-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

The power of suggestion is an amazing thing. Last week I wrote to a friend to tell her about the vegetarian chili that I was making for dinner. She wrote back to say that while she had never had vegetarian chili before, she did enjoy making WHITE BEAN CHILI from time to time.

It had been years since I'd even thought about WHITE BEAN CHILI, much less eaten it anywhere. Her simple comment stuck in my head until I got all of that turkey out of the freezer last week and was looking at ways to fix it into our Mexican Menu 240.

You know - sabes - I didn't even have a recipe. I just made it the way I remembered it and it turned out great. I soaked the white beans overnight, and then rinsed them the next morning before putting them in the bottom of the crock pot with a few cloves of garlic (ajo) and some lowfat chicken broth (caldo de pollo). When the beans were fairly tender, I added some chopped white onion (cebolla), chopped celery (apio), 1 can of chopped green chiles, and about 2 cups of diced turkey. (Pavo is the standard term for turkey, but you often hear the word guajolote used in Mexico. It is an indigenous word for the big bird)

Before serving the WHITE BEAN CHILI, Javier sampled a little and found that it wasn't spicy enough. He diced a serrano chile into the mixture about 1/2 hour before serving, but as you can see from the picture, it doesn't show up. It did the trick, though, and spiced up the chili.

Muchas gracias Mindy - the suggestion was terrific!

Huevos con Chorizo - 162

2010-01-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

So we've been waiting and waiting to eat HUEVOS CON CHORIZO ever since we started this project, but I was holding fast to the idea that I would NOT cook fatty old chorizo made with pork and would look all over for a chicken or turkey variety. I finally found some fresh, chicken chorizo a week or two ago at Whole Foods, and today we fixed it for breakfast with scrambled eggs and corn tortillas.

Chorizo can be one of two things: the spicy soft variety which usually comes from Mexico (or is inspired by a recipe from Mexico) and yields a lot of grease when fried, or the hard-sausage variety from Spain which more closely resembles a small salami and can be used in soups, stews, and in paellas. It is also loaded with fat, but more about that later...maybe another blog.

I am so glad that I waited. When I cooked up the chicken chorizo this morning, it didn't let off an ounce of fat. I actually had to spray the skillet a little so the scrambled eggs wouldn't stick to the pan when I put them in to mix them together with the now cooked pieces of chorizo. The lack of any visible grease or fat made me wonder if it was any good, but it was delicioso.

The next time I see this chicken chorizo at Whole Foods (because they don't make it on a regular basis) I'm going to by several links and keep them handy.

Tacos de Pescado - 163

2010-01-31T10:44:00.001-08:00

TACOS DE PESCADO is usually a recipe that we reserve for warmer weather. The best part of the meal is the mango (or peach) salsa that goes into each taco, so it makes sense to wait until certain fruits are in season. Now that fruits are available year round, specifically mangoes, we decided to liven up our dinner table with something light and healthy that would remind us of warmer days ahead.

(I actually prefer peach or nectarine salsa, but there have been muchos mangos in the grocery stores lately. I'm going to have to look up the mango growing seasons since I'm pretty sure that any time we eat a mango in the US it's coming from somewhere else)

Javier made the salsa de mango using diced mangoes, red onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and lemon juice. I added a tiny pinch of salt. I also thinly sliced some cabbage while Javier grilled fish indoors on the range top. Not exactly the tropical surroundings we'd rather visit this time of year, but the fish got cooked nicely.

We made our tacos at the table out of fresh corn tortillas, fish, salsa, shredded cabbage, and had some sliced avocados on the side. Javier likes the avocado on his taco, but I prefer it to the side. Los tacos fueron muy ricos y esperamos repetir esta comida otro día.

Mole verde - 164

2010-01-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

I still have tons of turkey in the freezer from last November. We went to a potluck dinner on Thanksgiving, but still cooked a turkey of our own here at home just so we could enjoy the leftovers later. I was also thinking ahead as there are many delicious Mexican meals that are centered around turkey. Mole - any kind of mole - is the one that first comes to mind.

In my opinion MOLE VERDE is not a true mole because it doesn't involve the complicated sophistication of multiple ingredients and cooking techniques. There is no grinding or chopping involved in the process, and a minimal amount of the toasting of seeds and a few nuts (pumpkin and peanuts) go into the process. Thickened with a stale corn tortilla, it can have the consistency of the darker red, brown and black moles.

Back to the leftover turkey...I took all of it out of the freezer yesterday and began some weekend cooking by making broth out of some of the parts. I chose the dark meat for last night's dinner and reserved most of the white meat for another meal you'll read about in a few days. Once I had my turkey broth, I was ready to begin.

GREEN MOLE is the combination of toasted pepitas de calabaza (pumpkin seeds) and peanuts; cooked tomatillos and chiles serranos, cilantro, garlic and peppercorns. To this mixture of ingredients which have now been blended, I added the stale corn tortilla and some of the turkey broth and continued blending it all into a smooth sauce before adding a pinch of salt. This was poured over the re-heated cooked turkey and served over brown rice and with corn tortillas on the side. It might sound complicated, but with the turkey already cooked, it only took me about an hour from start (making the broth) to finish (blending the ingredients) while the brown rice cooked.

Sobras sabrosas - 165

2010-01-28T07:42:00.001-08:00

Once again - sobras sabrosas - meaning "delicious leftovers." If today's picture looks a lot like yesterday's CARNE ADOBADA, that's because it is (or it was).

We had two of the chuletas de puerco (pork chops) left over, and with the weekend looming ahead, decided to use them for dinner again. So, we rummaged through the refrigerator and when we discovered lettuce, salsa, and some crema, we decided to make tacos. By the way, ever since we discovered that tortillería several blocks from home, we have become regulars. Their tortillas are really the best in town, and they make them fresh 4 days a week.

So, we grilled up some onions, thinly sliced the chuletas, and heated them together in a skillet. If they look greasy, it's only through the "magic of photography." They were anything but greasy, and what you're seeing is probably the adobo sauce that was used to marinate them the night before - or maybe some glare.

Served with thinly shredded lettuce, queso fresco, crema y salsa, these were really good tacos! Anything else - such as guacamole - would have taken away from the flavor of the meat.

Carne adobada - 166

2010-01-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

I know what it looks like, but it's NOT pork chops in barbecue sauce! Tonight's dinner was something we ate years ago on a trip to New Mexico - CARNE ADOBADA - and it was well worth the wait to eat it again tonight so many years later.

Last week we bought some beautiful boneless pork chops (chuletas de puerco). Some people say that the bone gives meat more flavor, especially when it's grilled, and I would normally agree. However, the price on these boneless chops was actually less than the bone-in variety, so we decided to give them a try knowing that they might be dry and / or tasteless.

Javier used a recipe for the adobo paste from an old cookbook. It is made from a combination of dried red chiles (some of the same varieties that are used for mole), spices and vinegar. The recipe asks you to marinate the meat for 1-3 days, but for shorter periods of time "if that's all the time you have." Following the marinating process, the chops are grilled.

I was SO worried about dry, flavorless chops, but I was surprised to eat some of the best boneless pork chops I'd ever eaten tonight! They were juicy on the inside and delicious with the adobo paste on the outside. No complaints from me!

Enchiladas rojas y verdes - 167

2010-01-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

What to do with leftover chicken? Se hace unas enchiladas, por supuesto...

We had some delicious roast chicken breasts that we bought at the deli last week, and after using some of the meat in a chicken vegetable soup, we had enough leftover to still make another meal. Burrowing through the cupboards and the refrigerator we found some canned enchilada sauce, some fresh tomatillos, chiles y fresh garlic to use in another salsa.

Javier shredded the meat off the chicken breasts (pechugas de pollo) and I made the sauces. Claro, one came out of a can, but we were trying it out. Javier still makes the best salsa de enchiladas roja and I can make a pretty mean salsa de enchiladas verde. While I was at work today he roasted the tomatillos, chile serrano, y el ajo and when I got ready to collaborate with dinner, I made a salsa verde de tomatillos, chile serrano, ajo y cilantro. Javier opened the can of red sauce and heated it in an appropriate pan!

Let's move quickly here to the finished product: enchiladas rojas y verdes. We had sprinkled some shredded mozzarella on them before baking, and once they came out of the oven and were ready to serve, we plated them with chopped red onion and a small amount of sour cream.

Look at the picture ... they were perfect! No rice and no beans on the side were necessary! I had three - dos verdes y una roja and Javier had four - dos y dos. I can't remember a dinner on a Monday evening that has been so memorable...

Chili vegetariano - 168

2010-01-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

I've heard this recipe called Winter Vegetable Chili, but if you're a vegetarian, or a person in search of more meatless meals, you could make it any time of the year. I made it yesterday because we were having a group over for dinner, and two of the people present were vegetarians.

The basis for chili when I make it is three kinds of beans: pintos, rojos y riñones (kidney). I soak my beans overnight, and then rinse them in clean water before cooking them most of the day on the stove top or in the large crock pot. I cook them with water and epazote, which is a Mexican seasoning.

When the beans are tender - and not one moment before - I add canned chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce. Note: if you add tomatoes before the beans are cooked, they will usually remain hard and difficult to digest. At the same time, I sauté cut up winter squash, zucchini, carrots, bell peppers and onions. When they are just fork-tender, I add them to the bean and tomato mixture, and then start in with the seasonings. I like to use good quality chile powder, cumin, some crushed red peppers, salt, and a tablespoon of sugar. I find that the bell peppers and onions do the rest.

I served the CHILI VEGETARIANO in bowls at the table, and in the middle of the table I had arranged chopped fresh onions, grated queso fresco, sour cream, and a very hot salsa for those who like their chili muy picante.

I had also made my favorite corn muffin recipe - the one from La Ciudad de Mexico which I call "Featherlight Indeed." Here is the history behind that unusual name: years ago I clipped the recipe from a magazine in which people could write in and ask the writers / editors for recipes from their favorite restaurants around the world. Someone had written in requesting this recipe for corn muffins from a restaurant in Mexico City, saying that the muffins had been "featherlight." When I clipped the recipe out of the magazine, I neglected to clip the name, but went right to the recipe and instructions where the writer had written "These are featherlight indeed." Since I don't have the real name, this is the one that has always been at the top of my clipped magazine recipe for corn muffins, which are also my favorite - and probably because they're full of butter!

Pescado a la Veracruzana - 169

2010-01-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

OK, so we were naughty yesterday morning. We went out for breakfast and ate eggs, ham, sausage, bacon, pancakes and an English muffin. We sort of divided it between the two of us. Javier ate a big stack of pancakes and a slab of ham; I ate one scrambled egg, one strip of bacon, one sausage, and a toasted English muffin. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

We spent the rest of the day doing penance. For lunch we had a plain vegetable soup made with fat free chicken stock. For dinner we had defrosted some of our favorite fish (cod) and had been contemplating what to do with it all day. We finally decided to cook it A LA VERACRUZANA because there were no heavy sauces or ingredients involved as you can see from the picture. We also happened to have all of the ingredients on hand. Finally, we decided that we'd just have the fish in it's VERACRUZANA preparation along with a little salad and NO rice, beans, or potatoes.

It turned out perfectly, tasted good, and hit the spot. It also erased some of our earlier guilt about having eaten such a big breakfast at one of our favorite spots.

PESCADO A LA VERACRUZANA can be made with any kind of fish or shrimp. In fact, the most traditional recipes call for huachinango (red snapper), but I haven't seen any of that in the store for ages. The other main ingredients are sliced peppers (either hot or mild bell peppers), sliced onions, tomatoes, chopped garlic and Spanish olives. Some recipes call for alcaparras (capers), but Javier doesn't care for them and we didn't use them. Once the chopping and slicing are done, it's quick and easy to fix, too.

Let's talk guac / Guacamole 170

2010-01-23T08:06:00.000-08:00

Having grown up in Southern California, and before I went to Mexico the first time at age 15, I thought guacamole was dip. My mother made it with mayonnaise (or more likely Miracle Whip) and our next door neighbor made it with sour cream. You could buy it in little tubs from the grocery store which actually called it "guacamole dip" and the only thing similar to the real thing may have been the color. Some of it was awful.

On my first trip to Mexico at age 15, I was sent to live with a family in Guadalajara. Every day around 2PM we ate a large meal - la comida - with the family at a long dining room table. There were four American students, three of teen-aged their children, and the father that always sat with us to eat each day. The mother, Doña Meche (short for Mercedes), never joined us as she served the meal course by course and plate by plate each day to each one of us. We always started with a soup, then moved to a vegetable dish served on a separate plate, then a main course followed by dessert, which was always something very simply.

One thing that was always on the table was real guacamole. Todos los días. She mixed avocados with chopped tomato, onions, and cilantro, then seasoned it with salt and some lime juice, and that was all - no mayonnaise, no sour cream. It was delicious! Muy delicioso. Also in the middle of the table every day was a bread basket with bolillos, tostadas and saladitas (saltine crackers) so that we could eat our guacamole with any one of those, or wait for the hot corn tortillas that were served with the meal and eat little guacamole tacos.

Every home I have stayed in since, and every time we have visited Mexico - be it to a restaurant or to my mother-in-law's home - we have been served a similar guacamole, although most of the places that weren't catering to young American students always add a chopped serrano pepper to the mix to spice it up. I have had creamy guacamoles, and some very chunky guacamoles served with large pieces of avocado, tomatoes, serranos, cilantro and onions just barely tossed together with seasonings. I have bought aguacates (avocados) in the marketplace by the kilo, and I hate to tell you that sometimes one kilo of avocados cost me less than one single avocado costs here in the winter.

One of the best guacamoles we ever had on a trip with our kids was one that was served in Guaymas, Sonora. It was the usual variety of avocado, tomatoes, peppers, onions and seasonings mixed with crumbled queso fresco. (See today's picture) Another one that was memorable was one served to me in Monterrey, Mexico on a platter. To one side of the platter was smoothly mounded mashed avocado, and around the avocado were little piles of diced tomatoes, onions, peppers, cilantro, and cut-up limes. This made it possible to mix your own guacamole at the table to your personal taste.

A number of Mexican restaurants are now featuring guacamole which is mixed table-side by a waiter performing a routine. Since the charge for this guacamole can be $10 or more, you are paying for the show - believe me. A good guacamole should be (and still is) one of the most economical and satisfying accompaniments and/or light meal choices you can make, and goes well with so many Mexican meals.

Carne encebollada - 171

2010-01-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

Javier took over this evening and made dinner on his own. We had some thin-cut sirloin steaks in the freezer and he wanted to fix them in a way that was very Mexican, but not so picante. (Still recovering from the chiles rellenos - but boy were they good).

This isn't really a recipe, but rather it's a method of cooking beef, especially thin, inexpensive steaks. It's sort of like a stir-fry with the other main ingredient - the onions - being well-done. The tomato slices are added at the end simply for color, and the seasonings are minimal to non-existent.

CARNE ENCEBOLLADA, which means "meat cooked with LOTS of onions" consists of beef strips, onions and tomatoes cooked with a little olive oil, salt and beer. We served it with some warm corn tortillas and a smooth guacamole, beans on the side. Nothing fancy tonight.

Both of us remarked that the meat was a bit tough. Not inedible, but it required some chewing. Javier thought it would have been better having been marinated before stir-frying with the onions. I thought it was good, but I would have pushed for more salt and/or seasoning.

Quesadillas de Queso Fresco - 172

2010-01-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

I am really watching what I eat these days, so this morning I decided to make a couple of QUESADILLAS DE QUESO FRESCO and a half of an apple for my breakfast. It's not all about diets and weight loss, though. It's more about eating good food that's filling, but not made with fats, flour, sugar and additives.

We have some nice queso fresco in the refrigerator, so I sliced it thin and put it into a fresh corn tortilla (from that great tortillería) on the grill. When the tortilla was nice and hot, but not toasted to a crisp, and the queso felt melted on the inside, I served the QUESADILLAS with some sliced apple for dessert. Actually, a side of any fruit you like would work. Apples happened to be all that I had on hand this morning, but I usually have either oranges or berries around as well.

Sometimes we eat our QUESADILLAS for breakfast with a nice salsa, but last night we ate the leftover CHILE RELLENOS DE PICADILLO and they were muy picantes y muy bravos. This morning my stomach was pleading for a nice, bland breakfast and the QUESADILLAS DE QUESO FRESCO did the trick!

Hongos en Salsa de Tomatillo - 173

2010-01-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

Javier and I went back to the books for some inspiration the other day. We were starting to feel in a rut, as one often does in January, and wanted to look at the pictures and recipes in our Mexican cookbooks for some inspiration and/or memory helpers. We have about 5-6 very good and comprehensive Mexican cookbooks, and all of them but one have colorful pictures. However, the one without the colorful pictures, an older book by Diana Kennedy, has some of the best recipes and ideas. It was after flipping through the vegetable section of this old (but favorite) cookbook that I remembered a way to cook mushrooms, otherwise known as hongos o champiñones in Mexico.

I just happened to have all of the ingredients on hand! Not that I normally keep tomatillos, chiles serranos y hongos in the house, but I had been produce shopping a few days before and had picked up a number of things just because they looked so good. This is also a January thing.

HONGOS EN SALSA DE TOMATILLO is a simple combination of mushrooms, sliced chile serrano and onions in a tomatillo salsa made with garlic. It is made to be eaten on rice, in tortillas, or as a side dish to meat. Javier and I remembered a trip through New Mexico years ago where potatoes were served with chile verde ladled over them. The HONGOS EN SALSA DE TOMATILLO could also be served this way as a simple and inexpensive meal.

Chile Relleno de Picadillo - 174

2010-01-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

There are two good news items to mention today:

One is the CHILES RELLENOS DE PICADILLO that we made for dinner last night (we actually made 8 of them), and the other is the fresh tortillas that we picked up from the local tortillería. They both fall into the asombroso (awesome) category.

When Javier grilled chicken the other evening, he also charred and peeled 8 chiles poblanos. These are the same kind that I used back in December for the Chiles en nogada and last week for the Huevos con migas. He charred, peeled and seeded them for me so that we could make CHILES RELLENOS DE PICADILLO this weekend.

Traditional recipes for any variation of a chile relleno (stuffed chile) can be quite fattening as they're usually egg-batter coated, stuffed with meat and/or cheese fillings that are high in calories, and then fried. We have come up with a lower call stuffing - the picadillo in this recipe - and we make an egg-white batter before baking them in the oven.

Picadillo is a ground meat filling to which diced potatoes, carrots, onions and other vegetables can be added. It can be highly seasoned, and I learned to make it with a handful of raisins thrown into the mixture. I learned this from an older cook in Guadalajara, Doña Sara, but saw it repeated in several restaurants and other homes over the years. Other homes I've stayed in simply filled the chile poblano with a slice of white cheese, and there is a restaurant in Houston that fills them with nuts, squash and raisins.

Once the chile relleno is stuffed, we lay them side-by-side in a greased casserole dish. We then whip the egg-whites into a frothy foam and add one of the egg yolks in at the end just to give the batter some color. We pour this mixture over the chiles in the greased casserole, then bake them while we make a sauce out of a little of the leftover picadillo, tomato sauce, and onions.

CHILE RELLENOS DE PICADILLO are good served with rice on the side, but last night we went without the rice so that we could eat more of the good, fresh corn tortillas. We had been at the tortillería at the right moment. The fresh tortillas were literally coming right off the press, and someone came out to ask us if we'd like some fresh ones and how many of them did we want. We took two dozen and then ate 2-3 of them on our way home!

Pollo a la Parilla - 175

2010-01-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago Javier and I made a new batch of limoncello. I know, I know - not exactly Mexican, but bear with me for a moment or two. I learned how to make limoncello, an Italian lemon flavored liqueur, while I was in Argentina last summer, and now we love the stuff. It's not a very complicated process, but rather time consuming. You soak lemon peels in vodka for a couple of weeks, add a simple sugar syrup, let it stand another week (or two) and then strain it through cheesecloth into decanters. It's a wonderful dessert (and digestive) drink.

So, we end up with all of these peeled lemons which we then proceeded to juice. Now we had about 2 cups of straight lemon juice sitting in a jar in the refrigerator, and we start to look for a recipe - a Mexican recipe - that calls for lemon juice. Nothing comes to mind from the years of living in Mexico, and nothing pops out of the cookbooks except for a few fajita marinades that call for lime juice. This reminded us of the fact that we had received the lovely set of Mexican cooking spices from our daughter at Christmas, including on called fajita seasoning. We look on the side of the jar, and there it is...mix the seasoning with some olive oil and lemon juice, marinate the chicken, and grill for fajitas.

We weren't in the mood for the whole fajita routine of grilling the meat, peppers, and onions plus the tortillas, salsa, etc etc, last night, so we just marinaded a ton of boneless, skinless chicken thighs and breasts in the lemon juice / olive oil / fajita seasoning marinade, and then we grilled the chicken and served it along with some grilled calabacitas (Mexican squash). I have to say - that was the best chicken I've had in a long time, and I didn't feel that I was loading on the calories. We ate it hot off the parilla (grill) with the calabacitas and some leftover mashed potatoes.

A friend of ours, Teresa, joined us for dinner last night, so I also made a FLAN for dessert. FLAN is probably the most famous Mexican dessert, and it goes so good as a finish and a flourish to so many Mexican meals. Over the years I have learned to make it with fewer eggs and more nonfat or lowfat milk in attempt to cut the calories.

Sincronizadas - 176

2010-01-14T18:04:00.000-08:00

The picture looks like a quesadilla, but it's really a SINCRONIZADA. ¿Cuál es la diferencia?

A quesadilla is your basic tortilla - either flour or corn - with melted cheese on the inside. They can be cooked on a grill, or fried in oil (usually the corn variety). You can add a number of ingredients to the quesadilla, such as meat, peppers, sliced tomatoes, squash blossoms, or salsa while they're cooking.

The quesadilla comes close to being the Mexican answer to our grilled cheese sandwich. Almost everyone knows how to make them, and loves to eat them. Personally, I prefer the corn tortilla variety with a good queso Chihuahua or queso Oaxaca. My favorite kind of salsa is a dark red one made from chile chipotles y tomatillos.

Restaurants have taken notice and are making a killing these days on quesadillas. Have you checked out the prices lately? A couple of our well-known local Mexican restaurants charge $7.95 and up for a plain cheese one, and if you add grilled chicken or beef, plan on paying around $10.95. Some places will also add grilled mushrooms, spinach, crabmeat, or shrimp, but at higher price point.

We make quesadillas here at home when we're too tired to cook anything else, or when we're finishing up some old tortillas and cheese. Any kind of cheese that melts nicely will do. Tonight's SINCRONIZADAS were a simple variation on this theme: they include thinly sliced ham and tomato with the cheese on the inside of the flour tortilla. We used some Monterrey Jack cheese and finished up the whole wheat, low-carb tortillas we've had for the past week.

We always serve quesadillas or SINCRONIZADAS with guacamole y salsa, and tonight was no exception. Tomorrow evening will be something much more exiting!

Caldo de mariscos - 177

2010-01-14T17:50:00.000-08:00

Hola everyone...I'm running a little behind as I was under the weather for a few days and couldn't bring myself to think about food - much less write about it.

But, the night before the chills and fever began, we made a wonderful seafood soup known simply as CALDO DE MARISCOS. It's a rich seafood broth with garlic, onions, tomatoes, squash and carrots. I also added some hot peppers (see CALDO MICHI back in November) and added some cilantro towards the end when I added the mixed mariscos.

Mariscos is the general term for seafood. Rather than running around from seafood counter to seafood counter in a number of different grocery stores, I was able to buy a small bag of shellfish at our local Trader Joe's. It was a mixture of scallops, shrimp and squid. I add them right at the end so that they don't shrivel up too much, and don't lose their flavor.

It's traditional to serve a CALDO DE MARISCOS with arroz y tortillas, but since we'd already had rice a time or two in the previous week, we just went for the soup. Javier had tortillas, but I had seconds! El caldo fue muy sabroso y quedé satisfecha.

Burritos - 178

2010-01-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

What's better than a burrito when you're hungry and in a hurry to eat something good?

Yesterday Javier had cooked up some lean pork in a Chile Colorado sauce, some frijoles pintos, and arroz. As soon as I got home from work, he heated up the comal where we always heat our tortillas, and we both assumed the position to assemble the BURRITOS for a quick supper.

Last night's BURRITOS featured a whole wheat, low-carb tortilla with beans, rice, and the Chile Colorado sauce. We also served some guacamole on the side. Gone are the days when we smothered our BURRITOS with sauce, chopped lettuce, diced tomatoes, grated cheese, sour cream AND guacamole. These days we're cooking with lean pork, beans cooked in water with seasonings (epazote, sal y pimienta), and brown rice cooked in water, a tiny bit of olive oil, and salt. Once you wrap everything together in the warmed tortilla - be it whole wheat or not - it's all good. You really can't tell that you're eating something totally healthy!

BURRITOS seem to enjoy more popularity in the US than in Mexico. I'm guessing, but I'd say the principal reason is the flour tortilla. I remember a time in Mexico when flour tortillas were hard to find in the interior of Mexico, and a BURRITO just isn't a burrito made in a corn tortilla. It would be more like an enchilada. Burritos have been popular in Northern Mexico for a longer period of time given the proximity to the US and the availability of wheat flour.

One of these days we may break the diet and eat a good, smothered burrito. In the meantime, we enjoyed picking up our burritos with our hands and enjoying a delicious meal!

Mexican Casserole #1 - 179

2010-01-10T19:01:00.001-08:00

Sooner or later I knew that I'd have to confront the fact that I grew up in Southern California, and I grew up eating Mexican recipes that had been adjusted to appeal to north-of-the-border tastes. This might not be the appropriate forum for launching into a discussion of my mother's attempts to create "interesting and diverse" meals in our home. However, no discussion on this topic would be complete without a sidebar discussion on the ever-popular Mexican casserole that was served in hundreds of permutations during my childhood. My mother was responsible for about 5% of them, and they had names like Enchilada Casserole and Tamale Pie.

BUT - today's recipe came to me through my friend Mindy. When I was 17 years old, I had returned from an extended stay in Mexico and was invited to her home for dinner. In "honor" of my stay in Mexico, Mindy's mother served a Mexican casserole with salad and bread on the side. I have always remembered this delicious casserole and her mother's way of saying "welcome home." Mindy's mother, Suzanne, got this recipe from the Pasadena Prefers (1965) cookbook.

Mindy sent me the recipe when I started this porject. It is a combination of simple ingredients: ground beef, tomatoes, tortillas, green chiles, cheese and seasonings. Javier and I made one major adjustment to the recipe: we used LEAN ground turkey rather than ground beef because that's what we had on hand. It was still delicious, and Javier - the real Mexican in the family - gave it a 10 on a scale of 10. When I asked him if he thought any Mexican would enjoy eating this kind of casserole, he said - yes, of course. I also thought it was quite spicy, and not bland like some Mexican-style casseroles.

We ate the casserole with some guacamole on top of each serving. It is easy to cut it into squares and serve it out of the casserole dish in the same way you'd serve lasagne.

By the way, if you have a great recipe for a Mexican casserole, please send it along. I'd love to try several others during this project, and I'll give your recipe a plug.

Pechugas de Pollo en Crema Poblana - 180

2010-01-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

If you read yesterday's blog about HUEVOS CON MIGAS, you may have noticed that I mentioned having charred and peeled some chiles poblanos. We had done so because I had been planning to make the PECHUGAS DE POLLO EN CREMA POBLANA for a few days, and the main ingredient for the crema were the chiles poblanos. In case you've never done this grilling / charring process followed by the peeling and seeding of the chiles, I will include a link at the end of today's blog.

Before I launch into the recipe and techniques, I need to give some credit to Señora Lourdes en Morelia, Michoacán, México. I stayed with Lourdes, her husband Carlos, and her two grandchildren for three weeks while I was chaperoning a group to Morelia. She was a very good cook, and I don't think we ever had the same meal twice in three years. When I left, she made me a gift of a nicely photocopied version of her favorite cookbook, which had gone out of print years before. She will never know how much that gift has meant to me. The PECHUGAS DE POLLO EN CREMA POBLANA is a recipe from her kitchen.

Since our skies had cleared up considerably yesterday, Javier was able to light the grill to do the chiles outdoors, but an added "bonus" was being able to grill the chicken breasts - las pechugas de pollo - on the grill, too. As soon as they were done grilling (having been very lightly seasoned with sal y pimienta) we locked them into a plastic container with their own juices to keep them moist for dinner.

The CREMA POBLANA is made by blending the charred and peeled chiles poblanas (about 2-3 of them) with 1 clove of garlic, 1/2 cup of cream, a small amount of the juices that were retained in the plastic container (about 1 T), some sea salt, cilantro, and a tiny bit of oregano. The idea is to blend it all into a creamy, smooth sauce to serve over the grilled chicken breasts. I reheated them in a non-stick skillet, thenpoured the blended sauce over all, covered the skillet, and allowed it all to heat through for about 20 minutes.

Normally I would serve this dish with rice, but since we'd had rice (and even an ARROZ CON POLLO dinner a couple of nights before) I decided to make some boiled potatoes. They were boiled in between a just done and an about-to-fall-apart stage that made them perfect for absorbing the CREMA POBLANA sauce. I also sauteed some onions and yellow and green squash to go on the side. Javier ate his pollo with some corn tortillas, but I'm still trying to mount a successful defense against the holiday pounds! No es tan fácil...

Here is a link for roasting (charring) and peeling the chiles poblanos:
http://www.learn2grow.com/projects/edibles/recipes/RoastedGreenChiles.aspx

Huevos con migas - 181

2010-01-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was Mexican this morning. Javier had roasted some chile poblanos on the grill for a recipe I'm making for dinner tonight, and I spotted them sitting in the refrigerator awaiting their trip into the blender as part of a poblana sauce that will be served over chicken.

HUEVOS CON MIGAS is a good breakfast recipe that we discovered for the first time on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, TX years ago. They were so good that we found a recipe and made them over and over again for several years, but then somehow forgot about them.

To start with, you need 1-2 chiles poblanos. These are the large, dark green "waxy" looking kind found in the chile pepper area of a produce department in most grocery stores. Once the chiles poblanos have been roasted, blistered, and peeled you can cut the limp flesh of the pepper into strips, which become the migas in this recipe. If you find seeds or veins on the inside of the roasted peppers, it's a good idea to discard them.

Next, you sauté the migas in a little olive oil while you beat some eggs. I usually beat 3 eggs for the two of us and add 1-2 T of water as I'm beating them full of air.

Finally, you scramble the eggs into the migas, which by now have heated through nicely and are probably causing you to cough mildly as you sauté them. When the eggs are scrambled the way you like them ( barely or well done) you can serve the HUEVOS CON MIGAS with some hot corn tortillas, salsa, and some crumbled queso fresco. It's an easy, healthy breakfast that we should eat more often - and one that I hadn't thought about in years.

Arroz con pollo - 182

2010-01-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

This has been a hard week to come up with ideas for meals. Coming off of the holidays, all I could think about was eating less, not more. Our budget was tight, so we couldn't go out and buy all of the ingredientes we wanted to use. It was also my first week of the Winter term (I teach Spanish at the local community college), and so my mind was on work and not so much on food. All of the meals we ate and that I've written about were good, but I was eating to live and not the other way around. Now I'm ready to rebound, and have already started searching the back of my brain for other recipes that we have used and enjoyed.

ARROZ CON POLLO is sort of a Latin American (and Spanish) standard. There are as many versions as there are cooks, I'm sure. Javier used to make ARROZ CON POLLO with white rice, tomato sauce, cooked vegetables (carrots, celery, onions and bell peppers) and then put it all into a casserole dish, top it with cheese, and then bake it until the cheese had melted. This got the kids enthused about ARROZ CON POLLO, but being a cheese lover, it made me happy, too.

For last night's version, Javier used brown rice and the few tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, garlic, and some celery that we had on hand. Yes, we are still watching a budget AND eating things from the freezer, so he didn't run out and pick up any other ingredients. The chicken was some of the shredded breast meat we made in early December when we made our own chicken stock. It was time to finish it up as we continue to clean out the freezer.

As I watched him make this dish and sipped my wine, I couldn't muster a lot of enthusiasm for another night of cleaning out the freezer and using what we have on hand. But - the meal turned out great y fue muy delicioso. Se lo recomiendo a todos! (And when I say that I recommend it to everyone, I don't mean just the ARROZ CON POLLO. I also think that the using things up / cleaning things out combos actually work well sometimes)