Food of the Month Club: Mango Salsa

Mangoes are my favorite fruit ever.  They are great in margaritas, chutney, desserts, or just on their own. When they were announced as the May Food of the Month over at La Cocina De Leslie I became excited.  While mangoes have such a nice, bright flavor that works well in a variety of dishes, I prefer them prepared simply with a bit of spice and tang.  This mango salsa comes together quickly and makes a wonderful compliment to grilled meats or fish, coconut rice, or just plain tortilla chips.

•3 large mangoes, pit removed, peeled and diced
•1 large onion, chopped
•1 red bell pepper, chopped
•2 cloves garlic, minced
•2 or 3 serrano chilies, minced
•A large handful of fresh cilantro, minced
•1/4 cup lime juice

Pit, peel, and cube the mangoes.  I have found that the easiest way to do this is to cut two slices lengthwise from the mango, leaving the large pit in the middle.  Score the flesh of the mango halves in a checkerboard pattern.  Be careful not to cut through the skin.  Flip the mango inside out, pushing the cubes apart.  Cut the cubes off of the peel right into a bowl.  Get as much flesh off of the pit as you can with a sharp knife.

Combine the mango cubes with the onion, red bell pepper, serrano chilies, garlic, and cilantro.  Toss with the lime juice.

Tortilla Crusted Chicken Cutlets with Spicy Maque Choux

Sometimes you just want to eat something out of the ordinary, but you don't want to have to buy a lot of ingredients.  I was in that sort of mood last night, and looking around in the cupboards and refrigerator I decided to get creative.

Maque Choux sounds super fancy, but it's really just a traditional dish of sauteed corn, peppers, and onions that originated in southern Louisiana.  I added a bit of a Southwestern twist to it by using jalepenos, cilantro, and avocados.  The addition of sour cream is a nod to rajas, a wonderful side dish of caramelized onions, hot pepper slices and sour cream served scooped into corn tortillas.

The maque choux is served either on top or alongside chicken cutlets that are breaded in a corn tortilla chip crust and then lightly panfried. This is definitely a summery sort of dish that helps to get out of the winter meat and potato slump.  Serve with an ice cold beer, preferably something pale.

For the chicken:

•1 1/4 pounds chicken breasts, pounded into thin cutlets
•flour, for dredging the chicken
•2 eggs, beaten
•1 cup finely crushed tortilla chips
•1/4 cup cornmeal
•1/4 cup flour
•1 teaspoon chili powder
•1 teaspoon cumin
•1/2 teaspoon oregano
•Salt, to taste
•About 1/4 cup vegetable oil

For the maque choux:

•2 Tablespoons butter
•1 small onion, finely chopped
•4 cloves garlic, minced
•2-3 jalapeno peppers
•4 cups frozen corn
•1/4 cup sour cream
•a small handful of chopped cilantro
•1/2 teaspoon black pepper
•cayenne pepper, to taste
•Salt, to taste
•2 avocados, cubed

Preheat oven to 350.

Set out three plates.  Add about 1/2 cup of flour on the first plate.  Beat two eggs on the second plate.  Mix the crushed tortilla chips, cornmeal 1/4 cup flour, chili powder, cumin, and salt together on the last plate.  Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.  Dredge the chicken cutlets first in flour, then dip into egg, and then coat evenly on both sides with the tortilla chip mixture.  Fry in the skillet one at a time for about two minutes on each side.  Transfer to a baking dish.  Repeat with remaining chicken cutlets.  Place the chicken in the oven to finish cooking.  This should take about 20 minutes.

While the chicken is in the oven heat the butter in a large pan over medium high heat.  Add the onions, garlic, and jalapenos.  Cook, stirring often until the onions begin to brown.

Add the corn.  Turn heat down to medium.  Simmer until the jalapenos become tender, about 10 minutes.  You may need to add a little bit or water or chicken stock so that the pan does not scorch.  Stir in the sour cream, cilantro, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.  Season with a little bit of salt, but not too much.  Remember, the coating for the chicken is already salty because of the tortilla chips. Heat through. Stir in the avocados just before serving.

Serve the maque choux with the chicken cutlets.

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad with Chipotle Lime Dressing

Last summer we grew our own lettuce.  We ate fresh salads almost every day.  After having all of that fresh grown lettuce the romaine and greens from the store in the middle of the winter just seem sort of, well, blah.

It can be hard to try to eat seasonally in the winter when there is hardly anything light and fresh around. Citrus fruit is cheap and readily available this time of year, so it makes sense to try and incorporate it into different dishes.  We had two grapefruits and two avocados on the counter that needed to be used up right away. Wade and I both really liked the flavor combinations of this salad.  I will definitely be branching out and trying more savory/sweet salads with fruit until we can get back in the garden growing beets, radishes, and spinach.

•1/4 cup lime juice
•1 Tablespoon dijon mustard
•1/4 cup olive oil
•2 cloves garlic, chopped
•1 chipotle chile in adobo, minced
•A small handful of cilantro, chopped
•Salt and pepper, to taste
•2 avocados, pitted and sliced
•2 grapefruits, peeled and cut into sections

Combine the lime juice and mustard in a medium sized bowl.  Stir in the olive oil, a little bit at a time, until well combined.  Stir in the garlic, chipotle, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Gently toss the avocado slices and grapefruit with the dressing.  Serve immediately or refrigerate until later.

 

Planning Ahead: Homemade Tortillas and Make Ahead Breakfast Burritos

I absolutely love flour tortillas.  We can easily go through an entire package of tortillas between the two of us in just one week.  However, the packaged tortillas are not as good as the real, homemade tortillas at some of the more authentic Mexican restaurants.

After years of trying several different tortilla techniques and recipes I have come up with the perfect recipe.  It is based on one that I made a few years ago at the living history museum when I cooked homemade tortillas on a wood burning stove with an older lady from Mexico, who was giving a demonstration to museum visitors.  She preferred to use vegetable shortening as the fat in her tortillas because it is not as fattening as lard, but it will leave the tortillas more pliable and less greasy than if they were made with butter or oil.  I find that the trick to getting the dough to mix well and stay very soft for rolling is to use very, very hot water from the tea kettle.

•2 cups flour
•1/2 teaspoon salt
•1/4 cup shortening
•3/4 cup very, very hot water.

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium sized mixing bowl.  Mix in the shortening until it forms coarse crumbs.  Stir in the hot water and knead until the dough is soft and pliable.  Wrap with plastic wrap and set aside for 30 minutes.

Pat the dough out into a flat circle and divide into eight pieces.

Roll each piece of dough out into a large, thin circle.  Don't worry if they aren't completely round.

Heat a large skillet, or a comal if you have one, over high heat.  Cook each tortilla, one at a time, until large bubbles form.  This will take about 30 seconds.  Flip and cook for another 30 seconds or so.  Repeat with remaining dough.  Let the tortillas cool.  Store in an airtight container for a few days.  They don't keep as long as the store bought kind because they don't have preservatives, so make small batches or freeze them for later.

To make the breakfast burritos you will need:

•aluminum foil
•waxed paper
•tortillas, homemade or store bought
•1 pound of breakfast sausage, or chorizo (I buy a spicy chicken sausage with peppers, onion, cilantro, and jalepenos in it from Sprouts.  It's called Chicken Caliente and it makes the best breakfast burritos ever.)
•1 dozen eggs
•1/2 cup milk
•Salt and pepper to taste
•About 2 cups shredded cheese

Brown the sausage in a large skillet over medium high heat until cooked through.  Beat all of the eggs, the milk, and the salt and pepper together.  Add to the skillet and scramble eggs and sausage together until cooked through.  Remove from heat.  Place a tortilla on a small piece of waxed paper.  Fill with egg and sausage mixture and top with a couple tablespoons of cheese.  Tuck ends in and wrap up.  Wrap with the waxed paper.  Wrap with foil.  Repeat until all the tortillas and eggs and sausage mixture is used up.

Store the breakfast burritos in a large container or ziploc bag in the freezer.  To use, remove the foil and loosen the waxed paper slightly.  Microwave for about two minutes, or until hot all the way through.  I like to make about a month's worth of these at a time.  They are really handy to have on hand for mornings when there is not time to cook breakfast.  Wade will often microwave a burrito and eat it in the car on his way to work, which sure beats hitting up the drive through.

Southwest Ranch Dressing

I started making homemade salad dressings a year or so ago as a way to save money.  I also noticed that there were so many strange ingredients in bottled dressing, so the homemade kind seemed like a healthier alternative.

We have several "go-to" dressing recipes, like garlic, thousand island, orange vinaigrette, and balsamic vinaigrette.  Ranch dressing is my favorite, but for a long time I could not find a recipe that tasted as good as the Hidden Valley kind that I was used to buying.  This recipe at Simple Bites is absolutely perfect.  It tastes even better than the bottled kind.  I make that recipe often and used it as the basis for this Southwest version, which is delicious on potatoes, vegetables, and in chicken wraps as well as on salads.

•1 1/4 cups sour cream
•1/2 cup buttermilk
•1/4 cup mayonnaise
•1 Tablespoon lime juice
•1 clove garlic, minced
•1 teaspoon cumin
•1/2 teaspoon chile powder
•2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced very finely
•Salt and pepper, to taste
•A handful of fresh cilantro, chopped

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Chill for several hours to allow flavors to blend.

Homemade Green Chile

In Colorado and New Mexico green chile is the preferred topping for burritos, huevos rancheros, chimichangas, tamales, etc.  In New Mexico Green chile is also sometimes made with potatoes and served as a stew instead of as a sauce for other foods.

Most often green chile is made with pork, but I've also seen variations that use beef, chicken, or are completely vegetarian.  The one thing that always remains consistent with green chile however, is the use of roasted and peeled green chilies, preferably Hatch.  Hatch chilies are unique to New Mexico and are grown in the Hatch Valley in the southwestern part of the state near Las Cruces.

You can read more about the chilies here.   They are readily available around here in the freezer section.  They can also be purchased from the website.  They also sell seed packets, which I am absolutely going to have to get for the garden next summer.

After tweaking several recipes over the years I'm currently making green chile on the stovetop instead of in the crockpot and I'm using masa harina for the roux instead of flour because it has a more robust flavor.  If you can't find masa harina, go ahead and use regular flour for the roux.  If you don't want to have a pot on the stove all afternoon you can make this recipe in the crockpot, though if you go that route I'd skip the step of making the roux and thicken the chile before serving by stirring in a small amount (1/4 -1/3 cup) of flour/water mixture at the end.

This recipe can easily be cut in half, though it does freeze well.  There is no such thing as too much chile at my house.

•2 tablespoons vegetable oil or olive oil
•1 small package pork stew meat (about a pound, give or take)
•2 onions
•4 cloves garlic, left whole
•1/4 cup masa harina or flour
•2 30 oz bags frozen, roasted, peeled and chopped green chilies, thawed
•6 cups chicken stock
•2 Tablespoons cumin
•1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
•1 teaspoon oregano
•Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the oil in a dutch oven or stock pot over medium high heat.  Add the pork and brown all over.  Meanwhile, blitz the onion and garlic in a food processor until very finely chopped.  Add the garlic and onion mixture to the pot.  Add the masa harina.  Continue cooking, stirring constantly until the masa becomes very thick and is slightly darkened.  Add all of the remaining ingredients.  Stir very well to get the browned bits of roux up off the bottom of the pot.  Reduce heat to medium or medium low.  Simmer, stirring occasionally until the green chile is thickened to a sauce like consistency and the pork shreds easily with a fork.

You can add some jalapenos or some chopped tomatoes to the chile if you like.  I sometimes add them if I have some around, but it's not really necessary.

Refried Beans from Scratch

If I had to choose only one type of cuisine to live on for the rest of my life it would have to be Mexican.  I have yet to find a dish that couldn't be improved at least a bit by green chilies.  Soup, eggs, biscuits and gravy, cornbread, you name it.

The most popular side dish to go with Mexican food is refried beans.  Their mild taste and smooth texture pairs perfectly with any spicy entree.  Until a year or so ago I always bought canned refried beans because I didn't realize how easy (and inexpensive) it really is to make your own. After some experimentation I came up with a recipe we both liked.   Now our  freezer always has at least a few containers full of beans.  They are great to pull out for a quick bean burrito or a nice side dish.

•3 cups dry pinto beans, sorted and rinsed
•1 onion, cut into quarters
•4 cloves garlic, left whole
•1-2 strips of bacon, left whole
•1 Tablespoon cumin
•1 Tablespoon chili powder

Place all ingredients in a crock pot.  Cover with water to cover by several inches.  Cook on low 8-10 hours, until the beans are tender.

I use the crockpot all the time to cook dried beans now so that I don't have to babysit a pot on the stove for the whole afternoon.  The only exception to this is red beans, which have to be boiled for 15 minutes before they are placed in the crock pot.  They apparently have some sort of toxin that requires them to be brought to a quick boil.

Don't drain the beans yet.

Next, heat 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a dutch oven over medium high heat.  When the oil ripples add a small cup of beans.  Stir them around well so that they get fried.  Add another cup of beans and repeat until all of the beans are fried.  Mash with a potato masher or a stick blender.  I like the stick blender method because it is so much quicker, but it will result in a smoother texture than the potato masher.  You may need to add a little bit of the bean cooking liquid depending on the consistency you want.

Add salt, to taste.  I find that refried beans require quite a bit of salt.  Add additional chili powder and cumin to taste, if desired.

This recipe will yield 6-8 cups of refried beans.

Easy Beef Enchiladas for a Long Day

As much as I love cooking, some days I don't want to have to do much of anything in the kitchen.  Tuesday was one of those days.  Wade was off of work, so in addition to getting some work done on my thesis we worked on the yard and started replacing the gutters on the house.  

After working outside in the chilly fall air for several hours we were hungry for something hearty and easy to make.

I have been making beef enchiladas this way since high school.  Come to think of it, this is one of the first dishes I remember making when I became interested in cooking.  It has been a mainstay for cold, lazy nights for years.  

Easy Beef Enchiladas

•package of small corn or flour tortillas

•1 pound ground beef (or turkey if you prefer)

•1 small onion, chopped

•4 oz. can chopped green chilies

•16 oz can red enchilada sauce (I used some that I canned earlier in the summer from this University of Utah Extension Office recipe, but I've also used this recipe from Emeril, or just the plain canned stuff from the store)

•2 cups shredded cheddar, Monterey jack, or pepper jack cheese

Preheat oven to 375.

Brown the ground beef, onions, and chilies in a large skillet till cooked through.  Drain, if there is too much fat in the pan.  Stir in about 1/2 cup of enchilada sauce and 1/2 cup of cheese.  This will help hold the beef together a bit, making it easier to roll up the enchiladas and keep them from falling apart when serving.  

Spray or brush each tortilla with a small amount of olive oil to soften.  (I use a Misto filled with olive oil),  Microwave until soft and pliable.  You could also heat some oil in a small skillet and soften them that way, but using the microwave is easier.  Perfect for a lazy evening. 

Place a few tablespoons of the beef mixture in each tortilla.  Roll up and place in a lightly greased baking dish.  Continue with the rest of the tortillas and beef mixture.  Top the enchiladas with the remaining sauce and cheese.  Bake until heated through and bubbly, about 20 minutes.  Serve with rice, beans, and sour cream.

Two New Favorites! In One Night!

Wade and I are planning a road trip to New Mexico in a few months.  We will be going to Roswell to see the UFO museum and all of the other alien-themed things in the area (because we are just dorks like that.)  We'll also go through Santa Fe, which is probably the only other place I'd ever want to live besides Colorado.Looking at all of travel information online made me really, really want some spicy Southwest food.  Right then and there.

This is the best meal that I have made in a long time. I discovered two new favorites.  The Chipotle Mayo Chicken based on the recipe from The Homesick Texan and Roasted Jalapeno Rajas are going to become part of our regular menu rotation.

Chipotle Mayo Chicken, Adapted from The Homesick Texan

•4-6 bone in, skin on chicken thighs (or a package of drumsticks)
•1/2 cup mayonnaise
•1 Tablespoon lime juice
•A handful of chopped cilantro
•2 canned chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, finely chopped (freeze the rest individually in ice cube trays.  When you need a few chilies you can just chop up as many as you need, don't bother to thaw them)
•About 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cumin
•About 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
•Salt and pepper, to taste.

Preheat oven to 375.  Mix together the mayo, lime juice, cilantro, chipotles, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Add chicken and toss to coat thoroughly.  Place chicken pieces in a baking dish. Top with any leftover mayo mixture. Bake for about one hour, until the chicken juices run clear.

For the Rajas:

•1 Tablespoon olive oil
•1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced into 1/2 inch thick slices

•1/2 cup roasted poblanos, jalapenos, or other pepper of your choice, sliced.
•Salt and pepper to taste
•1/2 cup sour cream

Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat.  Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally until they become partially caramelized, about 15-20 minutes.  Add the jalapenos, salt, and pepper.  Stir to combine.  Add the sour cream and heat through.  Serve with hot flour or corn tortillas.