Tejas Tacos Take 2

We had a long day today, working on the house, so we made the Tejas Tacos again tonight from leftovers from last nights Grillin & Chillin. We took the grilled chicken thighs, a roasted poblano pepper and a red onion and Will chopped them up and sauteed them for about 5 minutes.  He then added some Monterrey Jack cheese to it and let it melt into the mix.  Instead of making our own refried beans tonight, we just used a can of refried black beans and we added cheese to it as well and mixed it in, until it was melted. We assembled the tacos as we did in the last Tejas Tacos post. SOoooo good!! You have to try these, like I said the possibilities are endless, so have fun with this.

Grillin' & Chillin' Part II

Last night was all about grillin & chillin. We fired up the charcoal grill and grilled some chicken and vegetables. This how we did it: you will need a 4-5 lb whole roasting chicken, 1 12 oz can of beer, EVOO, spice rub which I borrowed from Pat Neely, from the food network " Down Home with the Neely's". The rub is really good, so make up a large batch for future use. We just followed Pat's directions for roasting the chicken. We also generously sprinkled the rub on some boneless, skinless chicken thighs and marinated them in the remaining beer for about 1 hour, while the other chicken roasted. We also took some asparagus, drizzled w/ EVOO, sprinkled w/ S&P and wrapped a slice of bacon around it to grill and finally, we took some poblano, jalapeños, and ghost chilis-covered those w/ EVOO and S&P. When the beer can chicken had been roasting for 1 hour I checked the temp and it was at 200' so I removed it from the grill. BTW, I never opened the grill while the chicken roasted. I then grilled the thighs, peppers and asparagus. The thighs only took about 8-10 minutes, but be sure to check temp until it reaches 166. The peppers & asparagus took about 20 minutes. The beer can chicken tasted SOoooo good and the asparagus had a smokey flavor and the perfect crunch. We didn't even plate this, we took the neanderthal approach and just dug in with our bare hands. This is definitely a chicken dish that we will do again. Stay tuned, we are going to use the peppers and chicken thighs for some more of those Tejas Tacos.

Tejas Tacos

OMG! This dish is off the hook. I confess it's the best thing I've ever eaten and it only took 10 years for my hubby to share it with me. My husband was born in Mississippi and spent his childhood in New Orleans and Texas.  When he lived in Texas, the Tejas Tacos were a staple.  Well, we just happened to be watching the food network when a commercial came on for taco shells  long story short I said, "I want soft and crunchy tacos together", and that's when Will said, "that's a Tejas Taco" and he explained what it was.  You take a 6" soft tortilla and spread a thin layer of refried beans over it, then rice over the beans, then you take a crunchy taco, fill it with the meat, place it in the middle of the soft tortilla, wrap it up, drizzle with the sauce and sprinkle with the cheese. YUMMY! So Good!! This is what we did: I took package of Toro Negros Carnitas (VERY VERY GOOD ACTUALLY), refried beans that I made by taking 2 cans of pinto beans rinsed and drained, placed them in a pot with 1 C of chicken broth, a slice of bacon, S&P to taste and just cooked them down until they had a creamy texture, rice that was cooked with 1 C fresh corn from the cob, 1 tbs cumin, 1 tbs hot paprika, and 1 tbs turmeric and 2 C chicken broth.  The sauce that I made was from a recipe by Susie Jimenez, she a finalist on the next food network star- spicy tomatillo avocado sauce, drizzled this over the tacos and sprinkled some monterey jack cheese over top. You have got to to try this!  Biting into it, you get this explosion of textures and flavors, SOoooo good! I'm so excited, there are so many possibilities.

Meat & Potatoes

Tonight nothing complicated.  We all grill, we all make baked potatoes and we can all do a salad out of a bag, Right?  If you don't know how, let's get started.  Preheat your oven to 425 for your baked potatoes.  Then take your 10oz russet potatoes that have been scrubbed clean and dried and coat them with EVOO and Kosher Salt, when your oven reaches temp., bake them for 40-45 minutes.  The salt and oil will give the skins a crispy coating.  After my potatoes finished I placed them in my warming drawer and then I preheated my grill to med high heat.  I also made the bruschettta, which is just a crunchy bread toasted and rubbed with a fresh garlic clove, drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with S&P.  I usually do these in my panini press, but you could do them on the grill or in your toaster.  Your are looking for grill marks or a golden brown appearance.  I had 2 3/4" strip steaks seasoned with Kosher Salt and lotsa fresh ground pepper and a little EVOO to coat both sides of each steak.  Be sure to let them sit out on counter for 10 minutes or so, just to bring them up to room temp.  I then placed my steaks on the grill.  Grilling time is based on thickness of steak and how hot your your grill is.  For these steaks I grilled one side for 3 minutes over med/high heat, turned them over and grilled for an additional 2 minutes I also added a tsp of butter atop each one to finish them off, and I then removed them from grill and let them rest 5-10 minutes.  While those were resting I just opened a Caesar Salad Mix and of course added some more fresh grated parmigiana reggiano cheese, sliced red onions and fresh ground pepper.  Voila!  The steaks were cooked to a perfect medium rare and required no addition seasonings. the potatoes were crunchy outside and fluffy inside and enhanced with some unsalted butter and sour cream, the bruschetta was crunchy and well the salad was "a salad from a bag", but OK.  Tonight just the simple meat & potatoes, but still really good.

Mexican Lasagna

I wanted to make stuffed poblano peppers tonight, but I had to rethink because my poblano peppers from the garden were just too small.  So tonight I've made for you a Mexican Lasagna.  Now keep in mind if you make this dish you can really use whatever you have on hand, substitutions are great, so be creative. What I used:  8" flour tortillas cut in half (I would wait to cut the tortillas because the size of your baking pan will determine how many halves you need).  For the Filling: I used 1lb of 93/7 ground turkey, 1 chorizo sausage, 1/2 lb of veal (these meats were in frig and I needed to use them), but you can use whatever you have turkey, lamb, beef, chicken whatever and it doesn't have to be ground meat, you could use any meat cut into bite size pieces.  I also chopped 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 poblano pepper, 1/2 red onion, 1 jalapeno, 1 chipotle in adobo sauce, 3 cloves of garlic. I used 1 C frozen corn, 1.5 tbs hot paprika, 1.5 tbs cumin, 1 tsp coriandor, 1 tsp marjoram or oregano, S& P for taste, 1 15 oz can of beans rinsed & drained (whatever you have on hand), 1 14 oz can of tomato sauce.  You will also need 2 C of monterey jack cheese and I also added 4 oz of cotija cheese (this is a cheese from Mexico and is hard and crumbly, similar to feta but not as salty). For garnish a handful of chopped cilantro several scallions chopped.  Let's cook!!  Preheat your oven to 425.  Take a large skillet and add your meats and heat over medium heat and brown the meat and break it up as it cooks 5-7 minutes, add your peppers, onion, spices, beans, corn, and tomato sauce and let simmer for about 5 minutes.  Now it's time to start the layers for your lasagna: meat mixture, tortillas, cheese and just layer it  until you are either out of the mixture or tortillas.  Place your lasagna in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes or until the cheesed is bubbly and lightly browned.  Garnish with your cilantro and scallions.  *NOTE I only had 2 layers, so next time when I get to the last layer of tortillas I think I will save some meat mix to place over the final tortilla layer and then top with cheese, or maybe an additional cup of cheese. Try it and let me know what you think.

Herb Chicken & Sausage with Basil Couscous

Tonight I was inspired by Chef Giada DeLaurentiis not because it's her recipe, but because she is so beautiful and  I love to watch her cook.  So tonight we took boneless, skinless chicken thighs that had been marinated all day with fresh herb sprigs, garlic from the garden and some dry white wine.  The herbs I used were fresh rosemary, thyme, basil, and oregano.  I crushed 3 garlic cloves too.  I added the chicken, herbs, wine and garlic to large zip lock and let them marinate for about 6 hours in the frig.   You could marinate overnite too if you have more time.  What  you will  need for the dish:  marinated chicken thighs, 3 italian sausages casing removed and broken into bite size pieces,  3/4 C dry white wine, 2 tbsp duck fat (you could use EVOO too, but I've had this duck fat in frig for awhile, so I wanted to try it),  4 cloves garlic minced, fresh asparagus ( I only had 5 left from a bunch, so I cut them into 1/2" pieces, 5 mushrooms sliced, 1/2 C heavy cream, 1 C fresh spinach chopped, 3 sprigs of fresh thyme, 2 sprigs of oregano.  For the couscous, just follow the directions on the box, I added 1 tbsp EVOO and 10 leaves of chopped basil to the finished product.  I also cooked my couscous in chicken stock and I used the butter which is optional.  Now that we have our mise en place together lets cook.  I took a large skillet and added the duck fat and heated over high heat for 5 minutes.  I added chicken thighs and seared both sides for 2 minutes (be careful, the duck fat really pops and splatters),  I then added the sausage and let that go for additional 2-3 minutes, stirring periodically to brown all sides of the sausage.   I added the wine and let the pan deglaze and reduced the heat to med.  I added the asparagus, mushrooms, garlic to the skillet and mixed everything in.  I cooked this for about 3-5 minutes and then added the heavy cream and the spinach and continued to cook for another 2-3 minutes.  I then added the herb sprigs (which you will remove from the dish before serving).  I reduced to heat to med low and let this simmer for an additional 2-3 minutes.  I removed from the heat, covered the dish and let it rest until I served it over my basil couscous.  Not sure if the duck fat added anything special, but this dish was really really yummy, so give it a try and let me know what you think. Bon Appetito!!

Chorizo & Chicken Tex Mex

I'm back at the Chorizo again and this time it was a success, yay!!  If you're not familiar with Chorizo, it's a spanish sausage loaded with paprika and spices.  It has a very strong flavor and I think it works well with chicken.  The chicken will absorb the flavors of the Chorizo and sometimes it's not necessary to add extra spices when you cook with it.  This dish tonight is loaded with flavor and textures, so lets get started.   You will  need:  2 Chorizo sausages, casing removed torn into bite size pieces, 1 lb of boneless, skinless chicken thighs rinsed & patted dry, 3 cloves garlic chopped, juice of 1 lime, 1/2 of 1 red bell pepper julienned, 1/2 of 1 green bell pepper julienned, 1 jalapeno julienned (I didn't remove the seeds), 1/2 Spanish onion sliced thin, 2 tbs tomato paste, 1/4 C low fat sour cream, 1/4 C heavy cream, 2 tsp hot hungarian paprika, 2 tsp cumin,  S&P, 1 tbs EVOO, for garnish -3 scallions chopped, 1/2 avocado sliced/ 1/4 C cilantro chopped and 1/4 C shredded monterey jack cheese.  You will also need your favorite rice to serve this with.  I used 1 C basmati rice and simmered it in 1.5 C of chicken stock for 20 minutes after it was brought to a boil.  Now let's make the meal- I took a large skillet and added the EVOO and heated on med high heat for about 3-4 minutes.  I seasoned the chicken thighs with S&P on both sides and added the whole chicken thighs and the garlic to the skillet and let the thighs brown on each side for 2-3 minutes and removed them from the pan.  I then added the Chorizo pieces, lime juice and the peppers and onions, stirred them and let them cook for about 5 minutes.  The lime juice will deglaze the skillet and add a bit of acidity. While that was cooking I cut my chicken thighs into bite size pieces and added them back to the skillet with the Chorizo and peppers.  I added the spices, tomato paste, sour cream and the heavy cream to the skillet, stirred it in and then reduced the heat to low and let this simmer for 5 more minutes.  At this point is was really getting thick so I added less than 1/4 C water. I continued to simmer for an additional 3-5 minutes until chicken was cooked thru.  I removed the skillet from the heat and let it rest covered for about 5 minutes.  I served the Chorizo & Chicken over the basmati rice and garnished it with the a sprinkle of shredded cheese, scallions, cilantro and wedges of avocado.  Give it a try, it's easy, quick and really yummy!!