Adventures in Cooking

I love food and I love to try new things.  So when I found a small cookbook entitled "500 Mexican Dishes" for $5 I knew that I couldn't pass it up.  I grew up in Southern California where I got to know good Mexican food.  I ate Mexican food at least twice a week growing up and when I was asked what restaurant that I wanted to go to for my birthday, nine times out of ten, it was a place that served Mexican food.

Needless to say, I am rather snobbish and critical of Mexican food places out here in the Midwest.  I've been known to critique everything from the flavor of the salsa to how the enchiladas are prepared.  Sadly, the area where I live now does not have a lot of good places to get Mexican food.  Many places have "softened up" what they serve since many people in the Midwest can't stand a lot of heat and spice to their food.  I once went to a place where instead of enchilada sauce on top of the enchiladas (either the green or the red) they served me enchiladas with a sauce that tasted like it was condensed cream of chicken soup.  Yuck!

Due to the lack of really good places to get tasty Mexican food in my town (plus not having a lot of extra moola) I often make Mexican food dishes at home.  I realize that what I make is mainly Americanized Mexican food, but at least it always has the spicy kick that I have come to expect in many Mexican food dishes.  When I came across this book, not only did it have different dishes but it had recipes to make your own sauces, corn tortillas and salsas.  I knew I couldn't call myself a true lover of Mexican food without trying to make a few of these recipes myself.

                                      My ingredients (minus the chicken)

I started on this cooking adventure by selecting a dish that I could barely pronounce, let alone had ever heard of: chilaquiles.  According to the book, there are many variations of this dish, but mainly it is a tortilla chicken casserole with a green chile sauce.  It calls for making your own salsa verde (another 1st for me).  The recipe for the salsa verde calls for canned tomallios.  I couldn't find them canned (another downside to where I live) but I did get lucky that the grocery store had tomatillos in the produce section.  So I made the salsa verde with with fresh tomatillos.  And it tasted pretty good.  One hurdle cleared!

                                          The before picture of the casserole

The actual creation of the dish was pretty simple.  It calls for taking half of the ingredients, top them with strips of corn tortillas and cheese.  The rest of the ingredients go on top and you top it off with the last of the cheese and tortilla strips.  Then comes the hard part: waiting for it to cook!

                                         After it came out of the oven

Finally, the moment of truth had arrived.  It was ready for the taste test.  My husband Lee and I both take a plate full and sit down to eat.  Some of the tortilla strips on top are a tad crunchy from being baked while others are soft.  The cheese is nice and gooey & the tang of the salsa verde could be tasted with the chicken.  I thought that it was pretty good.  Lee, however, felt that the taste of the sour cream mixture over-powered the taste of everything else.  He has never been a huge fan of the taste of sour cream.  He thought that it was good but it could definitely be improved upon.  Luckily, we both agree that we'd be willing to try this a recipe again and look into the other varieties that the book offers.

                                                       Yum, yum