Tag: mexican

So tart-on wanted me to make her enchiladas, out of Mexicans, for eating. Not having any idea how to make them, I read four or five recipes online for common ingredients (this is how I research all recipes), then promptly forgot everything I read and just started cooking.

I started with some canola oil and about four cloves of garlic, minced. To this I added about two tablespoons of ground chiles (dried red, ancho, and california pods), paprika, chili powder (a lot), cumin, and onion powder. After this started to smell like enchiladas, I browned two chicken thighs on both sides, then poured in two cups of chicken broth and put on the cover for about fifteen minutes (on medium high).

After the chicken was cooked, I shredded it with a fork while the chicken broth reduced on high. Then I pulled the tortillas out of the oven (what? Where did the tortillas come from? I forgot to mention, I put some in the oven at 170 so they wouldn't break when I tried to roll them) and rolled them around the chicken before I put them in a square glass baking dish.

By the time I filled the dish and set the oven for 350 degrees, the chicken broth was reduced to the point where I could start making a sauce. I added two cans of tomato sauce, some garlic powder, some more chili powder, some dried parsley, about two tablespoons of cocoa powder (heck yes), and a little pepper. The chicken broth was salty enough so that I didn't need to add any salt.

After the sauce all came together, I poured it into the baking dish, covered the top with cheddar, and put it into the oven for half an hour. This is awesome. Eat enchiladas. Every day, until you die.

Recently, I had someone email and ask, why do you call yourself a masochist? Do you like pain? And the answer is... "Yes. I love pain. The pain that is imparted by our friend Wilbur Scoville". (Actually, all that guff about someone actually emailing me is just a shameless pretense to bring up the Scoville scale.)

The Scoville scale measures how much burny you're going to get on your tongue from eating said chile. Yes burny is a word! Why not?

Since I love me some code tags, I'm going to put our version of the Scoville scale in them. Take that, Web 2.0!

15,000,000–17,000,000 Pure capsaicin
9,100,000             Nordihydrocapsaicin
2,000,000–5,300,000     Standard U.S. Grade pepper spray
855,000–1,041,427   Naga Jolokia 
350,000–577,000         Red Savina Habanero
100,000–350,000         Habanero chili, Scotch Bonnet
100,000–200,000         Rocoto, Jamaican Hot Pepper, African Birdseye
50,000–100,000      Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper, Pequin Pepper
30,000–50,000       Cayenne Pepper, Ají pepper, Tabasco pepper
10,000–23,000       Serrano Pepper
7,000–8,000             Tabasco Sauce (Habanero)
5,000–10,000        Wax Pepper
4,500–5,000         New Mexican varieties of Anaheim pepper
2,500–8,000         Jalapeño Pepper
2,500–5,000         Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco pepper) 
1,500–2,500         Rocotillo Pepper, Sriracha
1,000–1,500         Poblano Pepper, Texas Pete sauce
600–800         Jalapeno Tabasco sauce
500–2500        Anaheim pepper
100–500         Pimento, Pepperoncini
0               No heat, Bell pepper

Scale courtesy of Wikipedia

Now, anyone who's never heard of the Scoville scale is wondering what the heck those numbers are up there. Well, basically thats the rating that Wilbur assigned each of the corresponding chiles using the Scoville Organoleptic Test. You'll never believe me if I tell you what the Organoleptic Test consisted of. Ready? Here it is. That's right, good old fashioned human test subjects. Ahh. The good old days. What peppers have I tried?

Everything on there with the exception of the Ají and the Naga Jolokia. I can't find them anywhere. But now I'm seriously considering spraying some pepper spray on my pizza at some point in the future.

Several years ago I found this recipe for Pinecone Cheese Spread in Kraft's food & family Magazine. This is another make-ahead recipe and is my favorite appetizer to make. LittleRoq loves it, too.

I prefer to serve this with Triscuit Crackers as they are more sturdy than Ritz. The Garden Herb Flavor is excellent. Also, rather than buying the Mexican Style cheese they suggest I use 1 cup of shredded Monterey Jack plus 1 cup of shredded Sharp Cheddar.

If you don't feel like forming this into the shape of a pinecone then you could just make a ball and pat the almonds around the outside of it. The pine cone shape is festive, but the taste will be great either way.

I wanted to have a sauce ready so I could make burritos, enchiladas, or chili colorado at a moments' notice, so here's what I did:

1. Got one of those $2 bags of large dried red chiles. The ones I tried tonight were Californian; we've also got some New Mexican ones on backup.

2. Removed just the stems and tossed them into a blender (I like hot sauces). Blended them into a fine powder (break them in half and blend them in phases).

3. Added all my powder to a can of diced tomatoes and half a clove of garlic (peeled). Back to the blender, to make a thick slurry.

4. Melted some butter over the stove (1 stick), added some salt, onion powder, and cornstarch.

5. Poured the mixture on top, cut heat, added chicken broth and a little soy sauce, and whisked furiously to integrate. Added more cornstarch at this phase.

I ended up with a dark red, slightly hot paste. I can't wait for those enchiladas.

Romano's Macaroni Grill 2001 N Rainbow Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89108

Teleolurian It must have been a busy night.

When we got to the Macaroni Grill, we faced the usual line-out-the-door setting that you get when you decide to go to a popular restaurant on the spur of the moment. Since I wanted to review the food, I decided to forego showing off my crayoned press pass and instead settled in for the half-hour wait.

In recent years, the Grill has gotten quite the menu facelift. Dining here is now more in the vein of classical Italian signature dishes and less of an upscale Olive Garden; however, the prices are still decent, with most dishes in the $10-$20 range.

Upon reaching our table, the server informed us that they were out of bread dishes and wine glasses, finding us some tumblers for drinking the house Red. Luckily, I'm not a bouquet snob, so I used the wine for fuel as I wrote scathing commentary ("she's just using you for your bed") on the paper tablecloth. With a communal bread plate, oil and balsamic vinegar, and an unspoken no-double-dipping rule, we sat around and chatted while our dishes came out.

For me, it was chicken scallopine ($9.49)- a bit heavy, but absolutely superb. The lemon-butter sauce didn't wimp out on the lemons, and the capers were heavily drenched and therefore delicious. Tender was the chicken, and tasty; the leftovers were even rather tender the next day (something you don't get in, say, a country steakhouse).

Savory Masochist

Ding dong the traditional dish is dead. Wait. no. I just didn't get one.

After we got our red wine in tumblers and tore off a few chunks of bread, I decided to go with a build-your-own pasta deal. Macaroni Grill offers these little checklists that you insidiously mark as if you were building your own Frankenstein. I decided on a Penne, with Tomato Cream sauce, and Sun Dried Tomatoes, Roasted Red Peppers, Pine Nuts, and Chicken. It was pretty good, although I can't say as I would get it again. It's my own fault really, for just hitting rand when I was looking at the menu. Oh well. The company was good and we hadn't had a date night in near a decade, so it made up for my pasta. After that, we wrote some generally strange things on the table paper, and we were off! to another crazy adventure.

Oh, I would write a longer review, however Tele pegged most of it in his.

Queen of Tarts
Okay, so when Macaroni Grill opened they had food that was so-so. In recent years the flavors had been stepped up and they redeemed themselves, until...that fateful night. If we offered to do the dishes I think they might have allowed us to do so. They were obviously understaffed being the day after Christmas, but no bread plates and no wine glasses wasn't the end of it. When the SM put in his original order it included artichokes. The waiter had to come back and let us know that they were out of those too. Apparantly not only did we need to do our own dishes, but we needed to go do our own grocery shopping for the ingredients before arriving at the resturaunt. Crazy!

Usually if I am at an Italian place I automatically order manicotti (if its Mexican then it is a bean and cheese burrito enchilada style), but I am trying to branch out a bit. So, on this evening I ordered Chicken Cannelloni (Hand-rolled pasta stuffed with oven-roasted chicken, melted cheese and spinach, then baked in an Asiago cream sauce. Topped with tomato sauce) for $9.99. The dish smelled and looked wonderful. I immediatly dug in and ate one out of the three stuffed pastas. Half way through the second shell I started to wonder "Where is the chicken?" I am a "recovering vegitarian" (as Tele calls it) so it really didn't bother me that I couldn't taste it or find it until I realized I am paying for chicken I can't find. Must find the chicken. So I tore apart the third shell in search for chicken. I eventually found a small sliver of shredded chicken. If this was Iron Chef the plate wouldn't have gotten high marks for the "theme ingredient" being the dominant flavor. Overall the taste of my dish was excellent, but I was dissapointed that with the name Chicken Cannelloni the chicken was not easy to find in the dish.

I have not given up on the Macaroni Grill yet because I must say that there bread rocks (mmm, bread), but I hope to never have the lack of service that we had that night again.

We have this big bag of chicken breasts in the freezer. Not the good, boneless, dinner-in-ten-minutes kind, but the genetically enhanced, buffalo-breast, bone-in stewing kind. Tonight, I figured I'd try the bake-and-broil method to cook it.

I started by sweating some onions and garlic over medium-low heat, then increasing the heat to medium and dumping in:

1. A glazing liquid. (I used half soy sauce and half molasses; you could use honey, or heck, even mango syrup). About 1/2 cup.

2. One green herb. I used a little mexican oregano; thyme and/or rosemary might have been better, but I didn't have any.

3. One egg yolk. Just to make it more glaze-y.

4. Some small additions. For me- pepper, a spritz of lime juice, one crushed dried red pepper, and a little salt (not much- soy sauce, remember?)

After all this, I had a thick brown liquid that smelled like pureed awesome. I folded a long piece of aluminum foil into thirds, dumped in one breast, made a pouch, and slathered it with sauce. (Two breasts total, so I split it among both).

Next, the bake-then-broil. While the pouches of aluminum foil are closed, bake on 350 degrees for about half an hour- then, open the tops and broil on full blast for three-five minutes until the onions start to caramelize.

It was wonderful. The foil kept the chicken from drying out, and the glaze, once broiled in, was enough to make this dish a repeat customer.