Did any of you notice the Tex Mex Sloppy Joe Sandwich posted by “The Homesick Texan” a few weeks ago? The photo alone made my mouth water. Most Sloppy Joes are ketchup based and sweetened with brown sugar but this Joe was put together with a tomato sauce that was more spicy than sweet. I altered the spices and changed up the chile a bit to give it a more New Mexican flare. I can’t tell you how much we enjoyed the flavors we experienced eating this savory sandwich.
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There are numerous recipes for wings that include different spices and flavor blends. In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to try a seasoning using green chile. Could I come up with a recipe that would taste as good as it sounded in my head? I’ve never seen Green Chile Wings on any restaurant menu but the thought has always crossed my mind, why not? Red Hot Sauce is the base for Buffalo Wings so why not use Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce as a base for Verde Wings. I’ve searched the web looking for a recipe but frankly there’s not much out there and what I did find wasn’t what I had in mind. So once again, I turned to my spice blend guru, Chef Paul Prudhomme, for inspiration. His Buffalo Wing seasoning is to die for so I used that as my guide and traded out the red spices for green chile powder. This seasoning mix was instrumental in the dry rub for my wings, the verde wing sauce and also making a cilantro dipping sauce. I made a small batch just to see how they would turn out just in case they were a bust. I don’t always get the response I’m hoping for but these Verde Wings turned out way better than I could have hoped for. I got some “Wow’s” but mostly the response was “Oh My Gosh”. I shouldn’t have worried so much because the guys couldn’t stop raving about them until they were completely gone. These would be the perfect finger food for your Super Bowl party!
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Chili is one of those versatile foods that goes beyond your hearty bowl of chili. You can make a number of meals just by changing it up. Add some beans and it’s easy to make a Taco Salad, top your favorite hot dog with cheese and onion and you have a Coney Dog, bake some tater tots or oven fries and you could have Chili Cheese Fries and don’t forget the Frito Pie. There are just so many good things to do with chili. And everyone seems to have a preference when it comes to spice and whether to add beans or not. I like beans in my chili but Joe does not, so I usually don’t put them in the pot of chili, but rather have some on hand to add to my own bowl. This chili is flavorful but not a hot spicy chili. If you need the heat, add some hotter chili powder and it will definitely spice it up. And lets not forget the sweet cornbread with ancho honey butter. I’m one of those girls who has to have her cornbread, it’s just not the same without it.
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The other night Joe took me out to dinner at a place called Frida’s (named for one of my favorite artists, Frida Kahlo). It’s an authentic Mexican restaurant that we found via a Groupon, in our area but had not been to. The menu was filled with wonderful food descriptions that were new to my taste buds. They used cactus, huitlacoche (a corn fungus which grows naturally on corn), achiote paste, wrapped chicken in Hoja Santa leaves, stuffed poblano peppers with apples, plantains and castillian nuts. They prepared dishes in a different way than my traditional New Mexican cuisine. We were treated with appetizers, 4 entree samples and a dessert. They started by bringing us Caldo Tlalpeno soup. Upon the first taste we were both impressed by all the flavors and that heat of chipotle that sneaked up on us. I started taking mental notes on what I was tasting and when we returned home I immediately started looking up this soup. I found that a lot of recipes included carrots, zucchini, and garbanzo beans. Frida’s didn’t include them and we loved it so much that I didn’t include them in my version either. Besides, Joe wouldn’t touch it if I included squash or beans. They placed the shredded chicken and Mexican cheese on the bottom of the bowl, ladled a broth with garlic, onions, peppers, slices of avocado and chipotle and topped with the tiniest tortilla strips and cilantro. I added some chopped fresh tomato and a lime wedge. It was perfect!
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The holiday traditions I remember from growing up in New Mexico are Luminarias which are small paper sacks filled with sand with a small candle inside. Throughout New Mexico luminarias are a special attraction all over the state and have become so popular that people travel great distances to see the displays. Another tradition is having a steaming bowl of Posole Stew on Christmas Eve. Posole comes from the cultures of Native Americans, Mexicans and Europeans and is known as a dish for celebrating life’s blessings. Posole corn is the hard dry corn kernels otherwise known as hominy. I still feel connected to New Mexico even though I no longer live there and count my blessings for all the traditions I grew up with.
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This recipe goes out to the Winsor family who have a special place in my heart. Through the years I have sat at their table while they assembled tortillas, sauce, meat and cheese to make enough enchiladas to feed a whole crew. I have been tinkering with making my own red enchilada sauce and I think I finally have the right combination of chiles and spice to make a sauce worthy of sharing. I made the sauce a day ahead and that made the enchiladas fast and easy to assemble the next day.
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We always save some of the biggest and best Hatch Chiles just for chile rellenos. I like the traditional rellenos stuffed with cheese. They can be stuffed with almost anything but there’s something about cutting into that batter fried chile and seeing all that cheese ooze out. You know it’s gonna be good! And they must have toppings. We had pico de gallo and chile pequin salsa but you can top yours with whatever you want. This recipe comes from “The Food of Santa Fe”.
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The pequin chile is a small dried chile that packs quite a punch on the heat scale. My mouth waters just thinking about it. It’s so hot that you have to eat it fast and keep eating it because if you stop for just a second you will immediately start feeling the burn. This pequin salsa is hotter than I’m used to but the flavor is so good I’ve become addicted to it.
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You’d better come hungry because this is the ultimate burger with 2 patties of ground beef glued together with cheese and green chile. You may not see it now but within this burger lies a volcano of cheese and green chile just waiting to erupt. I found a recipe for a stuffed burger in Chile Pepper Magazine 1996 and ever since then my family has hounded me to make them again and again. The original recipe wrapped a couple strips of bacon around the patties so if that sounds good, go for it. I know that for me, I can only eat half, between the burger itself and all the toppings that are piled on it’s a lot for any one person but it’s sure fun to try.
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The best tacos I ever ate were at the local drive-inn in my home town called “The Westerner”. My sister and I loved these tacos and would make a “Westerner” run whenever we had a taco craving. The Westerner is no longer there anymore but Kat and I still reminisce about those tacos to this day. The tacos I made tonight might be called leftover tacos, simply because I had a little leftover ground beef and a couple odd pieces of chicken in the freezer that I didn’t know what to do with. There wasn’t enough of either one to make a meal so I compromised and made 2 small skillets, one of chicken taco meat and the other ground beef. I raided the fridge for toppings, finding a little of this, a little of that and in the end we had a taco bar going to fill your own tacos.
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An Inspired Cook 