Posted on 05/01/2006 10:21:41 PM PDT by HungarianGypsy
At 10:16 this morning I called my favorite Mexican restaurant. It's cheap and it's still good. Not GREAT, but good. The owner answered.
"What are your hours?" I asked.
"We open at 11, and if nothing goes wrong, we'll be here until 9:30."
See, the restaurant was a block from where the local demonstrations were, so he could have closed for safety reasons. But, he opened his restaurant. I will go there again in the future.
Tonight we went to Old Country Buffet instead. On the way I saw another Mexican Restaurant open and crowded.
I'll post my husband's fabulous salsa recipe tomorrow.
LOL! Now wouldn't THAT be something?
BTW,Shouldn't you start with a recipe?
Any recipes for tossed buns on the fly?
We haven't been out to a Mexican restaurant for about 3 years, too expensive. When we lived in Nevada, we went to a nice place in Ely as our special treat once every year or 2. Very nice people, good food, good environment and affordable even for us. $100 for 8 or 9 people with enough to fill you up there and have breakfast and lunch the next day. Huge plates, real cheese.. I miss that!
I don't make corn tortillas, rolling them out by hand hasn't worked any better than trying to shape them by hand. Someday I'll get around to buying or making a tortilla press. However, we do make our flour tortillas at home, usually from scratch. I make plain for the younger kids, chipotle or chipotle-cheddar for the older kids as well as the adults.
We have burritos or similar at least once a week, more during the summer. Not all are real burritos but it's our generic term for any combo of meat, bean, cheese, veggies and salsas on a rolled tortilla base:) Enchiladas are once a month or so, being as the sauce takes a good 8 hours to cook properly. Sort of like a really good spaghetti sauce - the time invested is worth the result!
Menudo...por favor!
Enchilada sauce
Uses canned tomatoes, as fresh are too expensive most of the year. (Hoping for a good harvest from the garden this year)
Big pot, heavy one if possible. Sturdy spoon that won't melt when you stir your sauce. I like wooden ones.
Heat a couple tablespoons of oil (lard, whatever) in your pan. Add 2 onions, chopped. 1 bell pepper, chopped. 1-2 carrots, finely shredded. 2-4 stalks celery, diced. 1-4 cloves of garlic, minced. Either 1-2 teaspoons of chopped dried chiles or a few fresh ones of your liking. Cook until the onions are getting translucent. On medium-low, this takes around 15 minutes on my stove.
(all cans 29-ounce)
Add 2 cans whole tomatoes, 2 cans diced tomatoes and 2-4 cans tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes. Don't drain the juice or anything. Add more dried chiles, oregano, cumin, salt and black pepper - about a teaspoon of each for now. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least 4 hours. Check for seasoning each time. If you like a nice rich taste, add more cumin and some chipotle paste (or chopped chipotles if no local stores sell the paste).
If you like a sauce that is chunkier, or smoother, switch out the type of tomato you use. If you are only feeding a few people, you can easily make 1/3, though I wouldn't cut down on the cumin or salt much unless you are using salted tomato products. Otherwise, the acidity of the tomatoes overwhelms the seasonings and you end up with bitter hot instead of rich warmth that sort of builds up slowly and leaves you happy:) Experiment and make it your own. Most important rule of using any recipe.
anybody got a good recipe for mexican shredded chicken lemme know
Thank you! I'm the night owl of the group.
My first contribution right now is the link to the Mexican food recipe thread from last month - found it right away:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1597248/posts
While I'm not a regular burrito eater, I made something at New Year's that I really liked.
My black-eyed peas had cooked in the crockpot overnight into what I thought would be my favorite "chili" type of blackeyes. It's a recipe similar to the "7-bean soup" one we used all do before they started packaging that up commercially - when we used to give it in Mason jars for "New Year's Good Luck 7-Bean Soup" that had blackeyes as one of the layers of dried beans.
Well, this past New Year's Eve, I had bought a package of fresh peas so I wouldn't have to soak them. Boy, was I sorry. After cooking them overnight, I tasted them and aaccck! The peas had been sour, spoiled, to begin with and I didn't know.
So, I got out a sack of dried ones, quick-soaked them, and just made regular blackeyes with a ham hock and some bacon. I'm not crazy about them, but I had this whole potful.
I decided to make them into refried blackeyes, like I had done once before when I had too many leftovers of some bland ones.
First, I mashed them, adding lots of garlic, cumin, chile powder, and chopped onions. Then made a large patty of them to brown in some melted lard in a hot skillet. Got the patty a little crusty on each side, turning the whole thing once, then scooped out slabs of it and made burritos with large wrap-type flour tortillas.
Added grated cheddar, green onions, some nacho-type pickled jalapeno slices, some shredded lettuce, sour cream and my favorite taco sauce, which is Pace brand. Then I folded it all up into a burrito and loved it.
Sometimes, I fold it loosely and heat it in the microwave with just the cheese, onions and peppers, to melt the cheese, then open it back up and add the cold stuff. Yumm!
I got so used to those little packets of taco sauce from fast-food places where I'd grab a lunch while working--then tossing the packets in my fridge at home -- that it was the exact taste I wanted, lol. I could never duplicate it myself, though I tried. Then I found this Pace Red Taco Sauce at the grocery and I love it - it's that same generic stuff, lol.
It comes in a squeeze bottle and I keep it cold, just for putting on hard-type tacos, on taco salads and burritos. They have it in mild and either hot or medium, I think. I get one of each and mix them. They also have it in Green Taco Sauce, but I use something else for that, so haven't tried theirs.
For soft tacos or for enchilada filling?
either or, ive got a few uses for it, ranging from mixing with vegtables to tacos/enchiladas and burritos
This is just an all-around favorite, but not something you would get at your Mexican restaurant. Everybody makes it differently, but this is close to mine. I thought of it when I was thinking of shredded chicken.
I usually stew a whole chicken and use part of the meat for soft flour tacos, with just chicken, Jack cheese, sour cream, fresh chopped cilantro, and guacamole. That's my favorite combination of flavors. Please note I'm not a fresh tomato eater (allergic to them raw), so please add them anywhere you want to.
The rest of the chicken, I use for King Ranch Chicken. One note, when I'm stewing chicken for Mexican food, I learned from a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place to put lots of garlic in with it, and more celery than usual - just makes everything you put the chicken in taste better, to me.
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KING RANCH CHICKEN
For stewing the chicken:
3 to 4 lb. hen (or fryer)
2-3 ribs celery
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, halved
Salt, pepper
Water to cover chicken
To make the casserole:
1 pkg. corn tortillas
Hot chicken stock
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped, or green chile, strips*
1 can mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 lb. Cheddar or Velveeta cheese, grated
Garlic salt
Chili powder
Salt and pepper
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes and chilies, undrained
Boil hen until tender in water seasoned with onion, celery, garlic, salt and pepper. Cut chicken into bite size pieces and reserve all stock.
Chop onion and bell pepper or slice green chiles, set aside. Combine soups and set aside.
Just before putting casserole together, dip tortillas in boiling chicken stock.
Spray/grease/oil a 9x12-inch baking dish to make it no-stick. Start layering casserole in this order:
1. Tortillas dripping with stock, torn into 3rds or 4ths - use half pkg for the first (bottom) layer, saving the remainder for a 2nd layer
2. Chicken pieces
3. Onion, bell pepper*, sprinkling to taste with chili powder and garlic salt
4. Spoon soup mixture over, then sprinkle with cheese
5. Repeat the layers, being sure the tortillas are oozing with the stock.
Cover the casserole with the Ro-Tel tomatoes and all the juice. Juices in the casserole should be about half the depth of the dish; if not, add a little more stock.
May be made and frozen several days ahead, but always make at least one day ahead and refrigerate so flavors will blend. Bake casserole uncovered at 375 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Serves 8-10.
*Note about the bell pepper: the original recipe always called for green bell pepper, but I like to use roasted green chiles instead and it does change the flavor, to more Tex-Mex, I think, and goes better with the chiles in the Ro-Tel. You can roast a fresh poblano and skin it (more on that in another post) or just use canned green chiles - for some reason, I like the whole ones, cut into strips, better than the ones that come already chopped.
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OK - I'll get back with a recipe for it!
HG - please add to the list:
Proud Conservative2
Thanks.
Bookmark for later.
We're having a "Pot Luck " at work this Friday. I'm doing jalapeno cornbread. I'm thinking about doing them as muffins rather than a in round tin. Any thoughts, recipes, ideas?
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